The History of England, from the Accession of James II, by Thomas Babington Macaulay

Chapter vi

The Power of James at the Height — His Foreign Policy — His Plans of Domestic Government; the Habeas
Corpus Act — The Standing Army — Designs in favour of the Roman Catholic Religion — Violation of the Test Act —
Disgrace of Halifax; general Discontent — Persecution of the French Huguenots — Effect of that Persecution in England —
Meeting of Parliament; Speech of the King; an Opposition formed in the House of Commons — Sentiments of Foreign
Governments — Committee of the Commons on the King’s Speech — Defeat of the Government — Second Defeat of the
Government; the King reprimands the Commons — Coke committed by the Commons for Disrespect to the King — Opposition to
the Government in the Lords; the Earl of Devonshire — The Bishop of London — Viscount Mordaunt — Prorogation — Trials
of Lord Gerard and of Hampden — Trial of Delamere — Effect of his Acquittal — Parties in the Court; Feeling of the
Protestant Tories — Publication of Papers found in the Strong Box of Charles II. — Feeling of the respectable Roman
Catholics — Cabal of violent Roman Catholics; Castlemaine — Jermyn; White; Tyrconnel — Feeling of the Ministers of
Foreign Governments — The Pope and the Order of Jesus opposed to each other — The Order of Jesus — Father Petre — The
King’s Temper and Opinions — The King encouraged in his Errors by Sunderland — Perfidy of Jeffreys — Godolphin; the
Queen; Amours of the King — Catharine Sedley — Intrigues of Rochester in favour of Catharine Sedley — Decline of
Rochester’s Influence — Castelmaine sent to Rome; the Huguenots illtreated by James — The Dispensing Power — Dismission
of Refractory Judges — Case of Sir Edward Hales — Roman Catholics authorised to hold Ecclesiastical Benefices; —
Sclater; Walker — The Deanery of Christchurch given to a Roman Catholic — Disposal of Bishoprics — Resolution of James
to use his Ecclesiastical Supremacy against the Church — His Difficulties — He creates a new Court of High Commission —
Proceedings against the Bishop of London — Discontent excited by the Public Display of Roman Catholic — Rites and
Vestments — Riots — A Camp formed at Hounslow — Samuel Johnson — Hugh Speke — Proceedings against Johnson — Zeal of the
Anglican Clergy against Popery — The Roman Catholic Divines overmatched — State of Scotland — Queensberry — Perth and
Melfort — Favour shown to the Roman Catholic Religion in Scotland — Riots at Edinburgh — Anger of the King; his Plans
concerning Scotland — Deputation of Scotch Privy Councillors sent to London — Their Negotiations with the King —
Meeting of the Scotch Estates; they prove refractory — They are adjourned; arbitrary System of Government in Scotland —
Ireland — State of the Law on the Subject of Religion — Hostility of Races — Aboriginal Peasantry; aboriginal
Aristocracy — State of the English Colony — Course which James ought to have followed — His Errors — Clarendon arrives
in Ireland as Lord Lieutenant — His Mortifications; Panic among the Colonists — Arrival of Tyrconnel at Dublin as
General; his Partiality and Violence — He is bent on the Repeal of the Act of Settlement; he returns to England — The
King displeased with Clarendon — Rochester attacked by the Jesuitical Cabal — Attempts of James to convert Rochester —
Dismission of Rochester — Dismission of Clarendon; Tyrconnel Lord Deputy — Dismay of the English Colonists in Ireland —
Effect of the Fall of the Hydes

JAMES was now at the height of power and prosperity. Both in England and in Scotland he had
vanquished his enemies, and had punished them with a severity which had indeed excited their bitterest hatred, but had,
at the same time, effectually quelled their courage. The Whig party seemed extinct. The name of Whig was never used
except as a term of reproach. The Parliament was devoted to the King; and it was in his power to keep that Parliament
to the end of his reign. The Church was louder than ever in professions of attachment to him, and had, during the late
insurrection, acted up to those professions. The Judges were his tools; and if they ceased to be so, it was in his
power to remove them. The corporations were filled with his creatures. His revenues far exceeded those of his
predecessors. His pride rose high. He was not the same man who, a few months before, in doubt whether his throne might
not be overturned in a hour, had implored foreign help with unkingly supplications, and had accepted it with tears of
gratitude. Visions of dominion and glory rose before him. He already saw himself, in imagination, the umpire of Europe,
the champion of many states oppressed by one too powerful monarchy. So early as the month of June he had assured the
United Provinces that, as soon as the affairs of England were settled, he would show the world how little he feared
France. In conformity with these assurances, he, within a month after the battle of Sedgemoor, concluded with the
States General a defensive treaty, framed in the very spirit of the Triple League. It was regarded, both at the Hague
and at Versailles, as a most significant circumstance that Halifax, who was the constant and mortal enemy of French
ascendency, and who had scarcely ever before been consulted on any grave affair since the beginning of the reign, took
the lead on this occasion, and seemed to have the royal ear. It was a circumstance not less significant that no
previous communication was made to Barillon. Both he and his master were taken by surprise. Lewis was much troubled,
and expressed great, and not unreasonable, anxiety as to the ulterior designs of the prince who had lately been his
pensioner and vassal. There were strong rumours that William of Orange was busied in organizing a great confederacy,
which was to include both branches of the House of Austria, the United Provinces, the kingdom of Sweden, and the
electorate of Brandenburg. It now seemed that this confederacy would have at its head the King and Parliament of
England.

In fact, negotiations tending to such a result were actually opened. Spain proposed to form a close alliance with
James; and he listened to the proposition with favour, though it was evident that such an alliance would be little less
than a declaration of war against France. But he postponed his final decision till after the Parliament should have
reassembled. The fate of Christendom depended on the temper in which he might then find the Commons. If they were
disposed to acquiesce in his plans of domestic government, there would be nothing to prevent him from interfering with
vigour and authority in the great dispute which must soon be brought to an issue on the Continent. If they were
refractory, he must relinquish all thought of arbitrating between contending nations, must again implore French
assistance, must again submit to French dictation, must sink into a potentate of the third or fourth class, and must
indemnify himself for the contempt with which he would be regarded abroad by triumphs over law and public opinion at
home. 1

It seemed, indeed, that it would not be easy for him to demand more than the Commons were disposed to give. Already
they had abundantly proved that they were desirous to maintain his prerogatives unimpaired, and that they were by no
means extreme to mark his encroachments on the rights of the people. Indeed, eleven twelfths of the members were either
dependents of the court, or zealous Cavaliers from the country. There were few things which such an assembly could
pertinaciously refuse to the Sovereign; and, happily for the nation, those few things were the very things on which
James had set his heart.

One of his objects was to obtain a repeal of the Habeas Corpus Act, which he hated, as it was natural that a tyrant
should hate the most stringent curb that ever legislation imposed on tyranny. This feeling remained deeply fixed in his
mind to the last, and appears in the instructions which he drew up, in exile, for the guidance of his son.2 But the Habeas Corpus Act, though passed during the ascendency of the
Whigs, was not more dear to the Whigs than to the Tories. It is indeed not wonderful that this great law should be
highly prized by all Englishmen without distinction of party: for it is a law which, not by circuitous, but by direct
operation, adds to the security and happiness of every inhabitant of the realm. 3

James had yet another design, odious to the party which had set him on the throne and which had upheld him there. He
wished to form a great standing army. He had taken advantage of the late insurrection to make large additions to the
military force which his brother had left. The bodies now designated as the first six regiments of dragoon guards, the
third and fourth regiments of dragoons, and the nine regiments of infantry of the line, from the seventh to the
fifteenth inclusive, had just been raised. 4 The effect of
these augmentations, and of the recall of the garrison of Tangier, was that the number of regular troops in England
had, in a few months, been increased from six thousand to near twenty thousand. No English King had ever, in time of
peace, had such a force at his command. Yet even with this force James was not content. He often repeated that no
confidence could be placed in the fidelity of the train-bands, that they sympathized with all the passions of the class
to which they belonged, that, at Sedgemoor, there had been more militia men in the rebel army than in the royal
encampment, and that, if the throne had been defended only by the array of the counties, Monmouth would have marched in
triumph from Lyme to London.

The revenue, large as it was when compared with that of former Kings, barely sufficed to meet this new charge. A
great part of the produce of the new taxes was absorbed by the naval expenditure. At the close of the late reign the
whole cost of the army, the Tangier regiments included, had been under three hundred thousand pounds a year. Six
hundred thousand pounds a year would not now suffice. 5 If any
further augmentation were made, it would be necessary to demand a supply from Parliament; and it was not likely that
Parliament would be in a complying mood. The very name of standing army was hateful to the whole nation, and to no part
of the nation more hateful than to the Cavalier gentlemen who filled the Lower House. In their minds a standing army
was inseparably associated with the Rump, with the Protector, with the spoliation of the Church, with the purgation of
the Universities, with the abolition of the peerage, with the murder of the King, with the sullen reign of the Saints,
with cant and asceticism, with fines and sequestrations, with the insults which Major Generals, sprung from the dregs
of the people, had offered to the oldest and most honourable families of the kingdom. There was, moreover, scarcely a
baronet or a squire in the Parliament who did not owe part of his importance in his own county to his rank in the
militia. If that national force were set aside, the gentry of England must lose much of their dignity and influence. It
was therefore probable that the King would find it more difficult to obtain funds for the support of his army than even
to obtain the repeal of the Habeas Corpus Act.

But both the designs which have been mentioned were subordinate to one great design on which the King’s whole soul
was bent, but which was abhorred by those Tory gentlemen who were ready to shed their blood for his rights, abhorred by
that Church which had never, during three generations of civil discord, wavered in fidelity to his house, abhorred even
by that army on which, in the last extremity, he must rely.

His religion was still under proscription. Many rigorous laws against Roman Catholics appeared on the Statute Book,
and had, within no long time, been rigorously executed. The Test Act excluded from civil and military office all who
dissented from the Church of England; and, by a subsequent Act, passed when the fictions of Oates had driven the nation
wild, it had been provided that no person should sit in either House of Parliament without solemnly abjuring the
doctrine of transubstantiation. That the King should wish to obtain for the Church to which he belonged a complete
toleration was natural and right; nor is there any reason to doubt that, by a little patience, prudence, and justice,
such a toleration might have been obtained.

The extreme antipathy and dread with which the English people regarded his religion was not to be ascribed solely or
chiefly to theological animosity. That salvation might be found in the Church of Rome, nay, that some members of that
Church had been among the brightest examples of Christian virtue, was admitted by all divines of the Anglican communion
and by the most illustrious Nonconformists. It is notorious that the penal laws against Popery were strenuously
defended by many who thought Arianism, Quakerism, and Judaism more dangerous, in a spiritual point of view, than
Popery, and who yet showed no disposition to enact similar laws against Arians, Quakers, or Jews.

It is easy to explain why the Roman Catholic was treated with less indulgence than was shown to men who renounced
the doctrine of the Nicene fathers, and even to men who had not been admitted by baptism within the Christian pale.
There was among the English a strong conviction that the Roman Catholic, where the interests of his religion were
concerned, thought himself free from all the ordinary rules of morality, nay, that he thought it meritorious to violate
those rules if, by so doing, he could avert injury or reproach from the Church of which he was a member.

Nor was this opinion destitute of a show of reason. It was impossible to deny that Roman Catholic casuists of great
eminence had written in defence of equivocation, of mental reservation, of perjury, and even of assassination. Nor, it
was said, had the speculations of this odious school of sophists been barren of results. The massacre of Saint
Bartholomew, the murder of the first William of Orange, the murder of Henry the Third of France, the numerous
conspiracies which had been formed against the life of Elizabeth, and, above all, the gunpowder treason, were
constantly cited as instances of the close connection between vicious theory and vicious practice. It was alleged that
every one of these crimes had been prompted or applauded by Roman Catholic divines. The letters which Everard Digby
wrote in lemon juice from the Tower to his wife had recently been published, and were often quoted. He was a scholar
and a gentleman, upright in all ordinary dealings, and strongly impressed with a sense of duty to God. Yet he had been
deeply concerned in the plot for blowing up King, Lords, and Commons, and had, on the brink of eternity, declared that
it was incomprehensible to him how any Roman Catholic should think such a design sinful. The inference popularly drawn
from these things was that, however fair the general character of a Papist might be, there was no excess of fraud or
cruelty of which he was not capable when the safety and honour of his Church were at stake.

The extraordinary success of the fables of Oates is to be chiefly ascribed to the prevalence of this opinion. It was
to no purpose that the accused Roman Catholic appealed to the integrity, humanity, and loyalty which he had shown
through the whole course of his life. It was to no purpose that he called crowds of respectable witnesses, of his own
persuasion, to contradict monstrous romances invented by the most infamous of mankind. It was to no purpose that, with
the halter round his neck, he invoked on himself the whole vengeance of the God before whom, in a few moments, he must
appear, if he had been guilty of meditating any ill to his prince or to his Protestant fellow countrymen. The evidence
which he produced in his favour proved only how little Popish oaths were worth. His very virtues raised a presumption
of his guilt. That he had before him death and judgment in immediate prospect only made it more likely that he would
deny what, without injury to the holiest of causes, he could not confess. Among the unhappy men who were convicted of
the murder of Godfrey was one Protestant of no high character, Henry Berry. It is a remarkable and well attested
circumstance, that Berry’s last words did more to shake the credit of the plot than the dying declarations of all the
pious and honourable Roman Catholics who underwent the same fate. 6

It was not only by the ignorant populace, it was not only by zealots in whom fanaticism had extinguished all reason
and charity, that the Roman Catholic was regarded as a man the very tenderness of whose conscience might make him a
false witness, an incendiary, or a murderer, as a man who, where his Church was concerned, shrank from no atrocity and
could be bound by no oath. If there were in that age two persons inclined by their judgment and by their temper to
toleration, those persons were Tillotson and Locke. Yet Tillotson, whose indulgence for various kinds of schismatics
and heretics brought on him the reproach of heterodoxy, told the House of Commons from the pulpit that it was their
duty to make effectual provision against the propagation of a religion more mischievous than irreligion itself, of a
religion which demanded from its followers services directly opposed to the first principles of morality. His temper,
he truly said, was prone to lenity; but his duty to he community forced him to be, in this one instance, severe. He
declared that, in his judgment, Pagans who had never heard the name of Christ, and who were guided only by the light of
nature, were more trustworthy members of civil society than men who had been formed in the schools of the Popish
casuists. 7 Locke, in the celebrated treatise in which he
laboured to show that even the grossest forms of idolatry ought not to be prohibited under penal sanctions, contended
that the Church which taught men not to keep faith with heretics had no claim to toleration. 8

It is evident that, in such circumstances, the greatest service which an English Roman Catholic could render to his
brethren in the faith was to convince the public that, whatever some rash men might, in times of violent excitement,
have written or done, his Church did not hold that any end could sanctify means inconsistent with morality. And this
great service it was in the power of James to render. He was King. He was more powerful than any English King had been
within the memory of the oldest man. It depended on him whether the reproach which lay on his religion should be taken
away or should be made permanent.

Had he conformed to the laws, had he fulfilled his promises, had he abstained from employing any unrighteous methods
for the propagation of his own theological tenets, had he suspended the operation of the penal statutes by a large
exercise of his unquestionable prerogative of mercy, but, at the same time, carefully abstained from violating the
civil or ecclesiastical constitution of the realm, the feeling of his people must have undergone a rapid change. So
conspicuous an example of good faith punctiliously observed by a Popish prince towards a Protestant nation would have
quieted the public apprehensions. Men who saw that a Roman Catholic might safely be suffered to direct the whole
executive administration, to command the army and navy, to convoke and dissolve the legislature, to appoint the Bishops
and Deans of the Church of England, would soon have ceased to fear that any great evil would arise from allowing a
Roman Catholic to be captain of a company or alderman of a borough. It is probable that, in a few years, the sect so
long detested by the nation would, with general applause, have been admitted to office and to Parliament.

If, on the other hand, James should attempt to promote the interest of his Church by violating the fundamental laws
of his kingdom and the solemn promises which he had repeatedly made in the face of the whole world, it could hardly be
doubted that the charges which it had been the fashion to bring against the Roman Catholic religion would be considered
by all Protestants as fully established. For, if ever a Roman Catholic could be expected to keep faith with heretics,
James might have been expected to keep faith with the Anglican clergy. To them he owed his crown. But for their
strenuous opposition to the Exclusion Bill he would have been a banished man. He had repeatedly and emphatically
acknowledged his obligation to them, and had vowed to maintain them in all their legal rights. If he could not be bound
by ties like these, it must be evident that, where his superstition was concerned, no tie of gratitude or of honour
could bind him. To trust him would thenceforth be impossible; and, if his people could not trust him, what member of
his Church could they trust? He was not supposed to be constitutionally or habitually treacherous. To his blunt manner,
and to his want of consideration for the feelings of others, he owed a much higher reputation for sincerity than he at
all deserved. His eulogists affected to call him James the Just. If then it should appear that, in turning Papist, he
had also turned dissembler and promisebreaker, what conclusion was likely to be drawn by a nation already disposed to
believe that Popery had a pernicious influence on the moral character?

On these grounds many of the most eminent Roman Catholics of that age, and among them the Supreme Pontiff, were of
opinion that the interest of their Church in our island would be most effectually promoted by a moderate and
constitutional policy. But such reasoning had no effect on the slow understanding and imperious temper of James. In his
eagerness to remove the disabilities under which the professors of his religion lay, he took a course which convinced
the most enlightened and tolerant Protestants of his time that those disabilities were essential to the safety of the
state. To his policy the English Roman Catholics owed three years of lawless and insolent triumph, and a hundred and
forty years of subjection and degradation.

Many members of his Church held commissions in the newly raised regiments. This breach of the law for a time passed
uncensured: for men were not disposed to note every irregularity which was committed by a King suddenly called upon to
defend his crown and his life against rebels. But the danger was now over. The insurgents had been vanquished and
punished. Their unsuccessful attempt had strengthened the government which they had hoped to overthrow. Yet still James
continued to grant commissions to unqualified persons; and speedily it was announced that he was determined to be no
longer bound by the Test Act, that he hoped to induce the Parliament to repeal that Act, but that, if the Parliament
proved refractory, he would not the less have his own way.

As soon as this was known, a deep murmur, the forerunner of a tempest, gave him warning that the spirit before which
his grandfather, his father, and his brother had been compelled to recede, though dormant, was not extinct. Opposition
appeared first in the cabinet. Halifax did not attempt to conceal his disgust and alarm. At the Council board he
courageously gave utterance to those feelings which, as it soon appeared, pervaded the whole nation. None of his
colleagues seconded him; and the subject dropped. He was summoned to the royal closet, and had two long conferences
with his master. James tried the effect of compliments and blandishments, but to no purpose. Halifax positively refused
to promise that he would give his vote in the House of Lords for the repeal either of the Test Act or of the Habeas
Corpus Act.

Some of those who were about the King advised him not, on the eve of the meeting of Parliament, to drive the most
eloquent and accomplished statesman of the age into opposition. They represented that Halifax loved the dignity and
emoluments of office, that, while he continued to be Lord President, it would be hardly possible for him to put forth
his whole strength against the government, and that to dismiss him from his high post was to emancipate him from all
restraint. The King was peremptory. Halifax was informed that his services were no longer needed; and his name was
struck out of the Council–Book. 9

His dismission produced a great sensation not only in England, but also at Paris, at Vienna, and at the Hague: for
it was well known, that he had always laboured to counteract the influence exercised by the court of Versailles on
English affairs. Lewis expressed great pleasure at the news. The ministers of the United Provinces and of the House of
Austria, on the other hand, extolled the wisdom and virtue of the discarded statesman in a manner which gave great
offence at Whitehall. James was particularly angry with the secretary of the imperial legation, who did not scruple to
say that the eminent service which Halifax had performed in the debate on the Exclusion Bill had been requited with
gross ingratitude. 10

It soon became clear that Halifax would have many followers. A portion of the Tories, with their old leader, Danby,
at their head, began to hold Whiggish language. Even the prelates hinted that there was a point at which the loyalty
due to the prince must yield to higher considerations. The discontent of the chiefs of the army was still more
extraordinary and still more formidable. Already began to appear the first symptoms of that feeling which, three years
later, impelled so many officers of high rank to desert the royal standard. Men who had never before had a scruple had
on a sudden become strangely scrupulous. Churchill gently whispered that the King was going too far. Kirke, just
returned from his western butchery, swore to stand by the Protestant religion. Even if he abjured the faith in which he
had been bred, he would never, he said, become a Papist. He was already bespoken. If ever he did apostatize, he was
bound by a solemn promise to the Emperor of Morocco to turn Mussulman. 11

While the nation, agitated by many strong emotions, looked anxiously forward to the reassembling of the Houses,
tidings, which increased the prevailing excitement, arrived from France.

The long and heroic struggle which the Huguenots had maintained against the French government had been brought to a
final close by the ability and vigour of Richelieu. That great statesman vanquished them; but he confirmed to them the
liberty of conscience which had been bestowed on them by the edict of Nantes. They were suffered, under some restraints
of no galling kind, to worship God according to their own ritual, and to write in defence of their own doctrine. They
were admissible to political and military employment; nor did their heresy, during a considerable time, practically
impede their rise in the world. Some of them commanded the armies of the state; and others presided over important
departments of the civil administration. At length a change took place. Lewis the Fourteenth had, from an early age,
regarded the Calvinists with an aversion at once religious and political. As a zealous Roman Catholic, he detested
their theological dogmas. As a prince fond of arbitrary power, he detested those republican theories which were
intermingled with the Genevese divinity. He gradually retrenched all the privileges which the schismatics enjoyed. He
interfered with the education of Protestant children, confiscated property bequeathed to Protestant consistories, and
on frivolous pretexts shut up Protestant churches. The Protestant ministers were harassed by the tax gatherers. The
Protestant magistrates were deprived of the honour of nobility. The Protestant officers of the royal household were
informed that His Majesty dispensed with their services. Orders were given that no Protestant should be admitted into
the legal profession. The oppressed sect showed some faint signs of that spirit which in the preceding century had
bidden defiance to the whole power of the House of Valois. Massacres and executions followed. Dragoons were quartered
in the towns where the heretics were numerous, and in the country seats of the heretic gentry; and the cruelty and
licentiousness of these rude missionaries was sanctioned or leniently censured by the government. Still, however, the
edict of Nantes, though practically violated in its most essential provisions, had not been formally rescinded; and the
King repeatedly declared in solemn public acts that he was resolved to maintain it. But the bigots and flatterers who
had his ear gave him advice which he was but too willing to take. They represented to him that his rigorous policy had
been eminently successful, that little or no resistance had been made to his will, that thousands of Huguenots had
already been converted, that, if he would take the one decisive step which yet remained, those who were still obstinate
would speedily submit, France would be purged from the taint of heresy, and her prince would have earned a heavenly
crown not less glorious than that of Saint Lewis. These arguments prevailed. The final blow was struck. The edict of
Nantes was revoked; and a crowd of decrees against the sectaries appeared in rapid succession. Boys and girls were torn
from their parents and sent to be educated in convents. All Calvinistic ministers were commanded either to abjure their
religion or to quit their country within a fortnight. The other professors of the reformed faith were forbidden to
leave the kingdom; and, in order to prevent them from making their escape, the outports and frontiers were strictly
guarded. It was thought that the flocks, thus separated from the evil shepherds, would soon return to the true fold.
But in spite of all the vigilance of the military police there was a vast emigration. It was calculated that, in a few
months, fifty thousand families quitted France for ever. Nor were the refugees such as a country can well spare. They
were generally persons of intelligent minds, of industrious habits, and of austere morals. In the list are to be found
names eminent in war, in science, in literature, and in art. Some of the exiles offered their swords to William of
Orange, and distinguished themselves by the fury with which they fought against their persecutor. Others avenged
themselves with weapons still more formidable, and, by means of the presses of Holland, England, and Germany, inflamed,
during thirty years, the public mind of Europe against the French government. A more peaceful class erected silk
manufactories in the eastern suburb of London. One detachment of emigrants taught the Saxons to make the stuffs and
hats of which France had hitherto enjoyed a monopoly. Another planted the first vines in the neighbourhood of the Cape
of Good Hope. 12

In ordinary circumstances the courts of Spain and of Rome would have eagerly applauded a prince who had made
vigorous war on heresy. But such was the hatred inspired by the injustice and haughtiness of Lewis that, when he became
a persecutor, the courts of Spain and Rome took the side of religious liberty, and loudly reprobated the cruelty of
turning a savage and licentious soldiery loose on an unoffending people. 13 One cry of grief and rage rose from the whole of Protestant Europe. The tidings of the
revocation of the edict of Nantes reached England about a week before the day to which the Parliament stood adjourned.
It was clear then that the spirit of Gardiner and of Alva was still the spirit of the Roman Catholic Church. Lewis was
not inferior to James in generosity and humanity, and was certainly far superior to James in all the abilities and
acquirements of a statesman. Lewis had, like James, repeatedly promised to respect the privileges of his Protestant
subjects. Yet Lewis was now avowedly a persecutor of the reformed religion. What reason was there, then, to doubt that
James waited only for an opportunity to follow the example? He was already forming, in defiance of the law, a military
force officered to a great extent by Roman Catholics. Was there anything unreasonable in the apprehension that this
force might be employed to do what the French dragoons had done?

James was almost as much disturbed as his subjects by the conduct of the court of Versailles. In truth, that court
had acted as if it had meant to embarrass and annoy him. He was about to ask from a Protestant legislature a full
toleration for Roman Catholics. Nothing, therefore, could be more unwelcome to him than the intelligence that, in a
neighbouring country, toleration had just been withdrawn by a Roman Catholic government from Protestants. His vexation
was increased by a speech which the Bishop of Valence, in the name of the Gallican clergy, addressed at this time to
Lewis, the Fourteenth. The pious Sovereign of England, the orator said, looked to the most Christian King for support
against a heretical nation. It was remarked that the members of the House of Commons showed particular anxiety to
procure copies of this harangue, and that it was read by all Englishmen with indignation and alarm. 14 James was desirous to counteract the impression which these things had made,
and was also at that moment by no means unwilling to let all Europe see that he was not the slave of France. He
therefore declared publicly that he disapproved of the manner in which the Huguenots had been treated, granted to the
exiles some relief from his privy purse, and, by letters under his great seal, invited his subjects to imitate his
liberality. In a very few months it became clear that all this compassion was feigned for the purpose of cajoling his
Parliament, that he regarded the refugees with mortal hatred, and that he regretted nothing so much as his own
inability to do what Lewis had done.

On the ninth of November the Houses met. The Commons were summoned to the bar of the Lords; and the King spoke from
the throne. His speech had been composed by himself. He congratulated his loving subjects on the suppression of the
rebellion in the West: but he added that the speed with which that rebellion had risen to a formidable height, and the
length of time during which it had continued to rage, must convince all men how little dependence could be placed on
the militia. He had, therefore, made additions to the regular army. The charge of that army would henceforth be more
than double of what it had been; and he trusted that the Commons would grant him the means of defraying the increased
expense. He then informed his hearers that he had employed some officers who had not taken the test; but he knew them
to be fit for public trust. He feared that artful men might avail themselves of this irregularity to disturb the
harmony which existed between himself and his Parliament. But he would speak out. He was determined not to part with
servants on whose fidelity he could rely, and whose help he might perhaps soon need.15

This explicit declaration that he had broken the laws which were regarded by the nation as the chief safeguards of
the established religion, and that he was resolved to persist in breaking those laws, was not likely to soothe the
excited feelings of his subjects. The Lords, seldom disposed to take the lead in opposition to a government, consented
to vote him formal thanks for what he had said. But the Commons were in a less complying mood. When they had returned
to their own House there was a long silence; and the faces of many of the most respectable members expressed deep
concern. At length Middleton rose and moved the House to go instantly into committee on the King’s speech: but Sir
Edmund Jennings, a zealous Tory from Yorkshire, who was supposed to speak the sentiments of Danby, protested against
this course, and demanded time for consideration. Sir Thomas Clarges, maternal uncle of the Duke of Albemarle, and long
distinguished in Parliament as a man of business and a viligant steward of the public money, took the same side. The
feeling of the House could not be mistaken. Sir John Ernley, Chancellor of the Exchequer, insisted that the delay
should not exceed forty-eight hours; but he was overruled; and it was resolved that the discussion should be postponed
for three days. 16

The interval was well employed by those who took the lead against the court. They had indeed no light work to
perform. In three days a country party was to be organized. The difficulty of the task is in our age not easily to be
appreciated; for in our age all the nation may be said to assist at every deliberation of the Lords and Commons. What
is said by the leaders of the ministry and of the opposition after midnight is read by the whole metropolis at dawn, by
the inhabitants of Northumberland and Cornwall in the afternoon, and in Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland on the
morrow. In our age, therefore, the stages of legislation, the rules of debate, the tactics of faction, the opinions,
temper, and style of every active member of either House, are familiar to hundreds of thousands. Every man who now
enters Parliament possesses what, in the seventeenth century, would have been called a great stock of parliamentary
knowledge. Such knowledge was then to be obtained only by actual parliamentary service. The difference between an old
and a new member was as great as the difference between a veteran soldier and a recruit just taken from the plough; and
James’s Parliament contained a most unusual proportion of new members, who had brought from their country seats to
Westminster no political knowledge and many violent prejudices. These gentlemen hated the Papists, but hated the Whigs
not less intensely, and regarded the King with superstitious veneration. To form an opposition out of such materials
was a feat which required the most skilful and delicate management. Some men of great weight, however, undertook the
work, and performed it with success. Several experienced Whig politicians, who had not seats in that Parliament, gave
useful advice and information. On the day preceding that which had been fixed for the debate, many meetings were held
at which the leaders instructed the novices; and it soon appeared that these exertions had not been thrown away.
17

The foreign embassies were all in a ferment. It was well understood that a few days would now decide the great
question, whether the King of England was or was not to be the vassal of the King of France. The ministers of the House
of Austria were most anxious that James should give satisfaction to his Parliament. Innocent had sent to London two
persons charged to inculcate moderation, both by admonition and by example. One of them was John Leyburn, an English
Dominican, who had been secretary to Cardinal Howard, and who, with some learning and a rich vein of natural humour,
was the most cautious, dexterous, and taciturn of men. He had recently been consecrated Bishop of Adrumetum, and named
Vicar Apostolic in Great Britain. Ferdinand, Count of Adda, an Italian of no eminent abilities, but of mild temper and
courtly manners, had been appointed Nuncio. These functionaries were eagerly welcomed by James. No Roman Catholic
Bishop had exercised spiritual functions in the island during more than half a century. No Nuncio had been received
here during the hundred and twenty-seven years which had elapsed since the death of Mary. Leyburn was lodged in
Whitehall, and received a pension of a thousand pounds a year. Adda did not yet assume a public character. He passed
for a foreigner of rank whom curiosity had brought to London, appeared daily at court, and was treated with high
consideration. Both the Papal emissaries did their best to diminish, as much as possible, the odium inseparable from
the offices which they filled, and to restrain the rash zeal of James. The Nuncio, in particular, declared that nothing
could be more injurious to the interests of the Church of Rome than a rupture between the King and the Parliament.
18

Barillon was active on the other side. The instructions which he received from Versailles on this occasion well
deserve to be studied; for they furnish a key to the policy systematically pursued by his master towards England during
the twenty years which preceded our revolution. The advices from Madrid, Lewis wrote, were alarming. Strong hopes were
entertained there that James would ally himself closely with the House of Austria, as soon as he should be assured that
his Parliament would give him no trouble. In these circumstances, it was evidently the interest of France that the
Parliament should prove refractory. Barillon was therefore directed to act, with all possible precautions against
detection, the part of a makebate. At court he was to omit no opportunity of stimulating the religious zeal and the
kingly pride of James; but at the same time it might be desirable to have some secret communication with the
malecontents. Such communication would indeed be hazardous and would require the utmost adroitness; yet it might
perhaps be in the power of the Ambassador, without committing himself or his government, to animate the zeal of the
opposition for the laws and liberties of England, and to let it be understood that those laws and liberties were not
regarded by his master with an unfriendly eye. 19

Lewis, when he dictated these instructions, did not foresee how speedily and how completely his uneasiness would be
removed by the obstinacy and stupidity of James. On the twelfth of November the House of Commons, resolved itself into
a committee on the royal speech. The Solicitor General Heneage Finch, was in the chair. The debate was conducted by the
chiefs of the new country party with rare tact and address. No expression indicating disrespect to the Sovereign or
sympathy for rebels was suffered to escape. The western insurrection was always mentioned with abhorrence. Nothing was
said of the barbarities of Kirke and Jeffreys. It was admitted that the heavy expenditure which had been occasioned by
the late troubles justified the King in asking some further supply: but strong objections were made to the augmentation
of the army and to the infraction of the Test Act.

The subject of the Test Act the courtiers appear to have carefully avoided. They harangued, however, with some force
on the great superiority of a regular army to a militia. One of them tauntingly asked whether the defence of the
kingdom was to be entrusted to the beefeaters. Another said that he should be glad to know how the Devonshire
trainbands, who had fled in confusion before Monmouth’s scythemen, would have faced the household troops of Lewis. But
these arguments had little effect on Cavaliers who still remembered with bitterness the stern rule of the Protector.
The general feeling was forcibly expressed by the first of the Tory country gentlemen of England, Edward Seymour. He
admitted that the militia was not in a satisfactory state, but maintained that it might be remodelled. The remodelling
might require money; but, for his own part, he would rather give a million to keep up a force from which he had nothing
to fear, than half a million to keep up a force of which he must ever be afraid. Let the trainbands be disciplined; let
the navy be strengthened; and the country would be secure. A standing army was at best a mere drain on the public
resources. The soldier was withdrawn from all useful labour. He produced nothing: he consumed the fruits of the
industry of other men; and he domineered over those by whom he was supported. But the nation was now threatened, not
only with a standing army, but with a Popish standing army, with a standing army officered by men who might be very
amiable and honourable, but who were on principle enemies to the constitution of the realm. Sir William Twisden, member
for the county of Kent, spoke on the same side with great keenness and loud applause. Sir Richard Temple, one of the
few Whigs who had a seat in that Parliament, dexterously accommodating his speech to the temper of his audience,
reminded the House that a standing army had been found, by experience, to be as dangerous to the just authority of
princes as to the liberty of nations. Sir John Maynard, the most learned lawyer of his time, took part in the debate.
He was now more than eighty years old, and could well remember the political contests of the reign of James the First.
He had sate in the Long Parliament, and had taken part with the Roundheads, but had always been for lenient counsels,
and had laboured to bring about a general reconciliation. His abilities, which age had not impaired, and his
professional knowledge, which had long overawed all Westminster Hall, commanded the ear of the House of Commons. He,
too, declared himself against the augmentation of the regular forces.

After much debate, it was resolved that a supply should be granted to the crown; but it was also resolved that a
bill should be brought in for making the militia more efficient. This last resolution was tantamount to a declaration
against the standing army. The King was greatly displeased; and it was whispered that, if things went on thus, the
session would not be of long duration. 20

On the morrow the contention was renewed. The language of the country party was perceptibly bolder and sharper than
on the preceding day. That paragraph of the King’s speech which related to supply preceded the paragraph which related
to the test. On this ground Middleton proposed that the paragraph relating to supply should be first considered in
committee. The opposition moved the previous question. They contended that the reasonable and constitutional practice
was to grant no money till grievances had been redressed, and that there would be an end of this practice if the House
thought itself bound servilely to follow the order in which matters were mentioned by the King from the throne.

The division was taken on the question whether Middletons motion should be put. The Noes were ordered by the Speaker
to go forth into the lobby. They resented this much, and complained loudly of his servility and partiality: for they
conceived that, according to the intricate and subtle rule which was then in force, and which, in our time, was
superseded by a more rational and convenient practice, they were entitled to keep their seats; and it was held by all
the Parliamentary tacticians of that age that the party which stayed in the House had an advantage over the party which
went out; for the accommodation on the benches was then so deficient that no person who had been fortunate enough to
get a good seat was willing to lose it. Nevertheless, to the dismay of the ministers, many persons on whose votes the
court had absolutely depended were seen moving towards the door. Among them was Charles Fox, Paymaster of the Forces,
and son of Sir Stephen Fox, Clerk of the Green Cloth. The Paymaster had been induced by his friends to absent himself
during part of the discussion. But his anxiety had become insupportable. He come down to the Speaker’s chamber, heard
part of the debate, withdrew, and, after hesitating for an hour or two between conscience and five thousand pounds a
year, took a manly resolution and rushed into the House just in time to vote. Two officers of the army, Colonel John
Darcy, son of the Lord Conyers, and Captain James Kendall, withdrew to the lobby. Middleton went down to the bar and
expostulated warmly with them. He particularly addressed himself to Kendall, a needy retainer of the court, who had, in
obedience to the royal mandate, been sent to Parliament by a packed corporation in Cornwall, and who had recently
obtained a grant of a hundred head of rebels sentenced to transportation. “Sir,” said Middleton, “have not you a troop
of horse in His Majesty’s service?” “Yes, my Lord,” answered Kendall: “but my elder brother is just dead, and has left
me seven hundred a year.”

When the tellers had done their office it appeared that the Ayes were one hundred and eighty-two, and the Noes one
and eighty-three. In that House of Commons which had been brought together by the unscrupulous use of chicanery, of
corruption, and of violence, in that House of Commons of which James had said that more than eleven twelfths of the
members were such as he would himself have nominated, the court had sustained a defeat on a vital question. 21

In consequence of this vote the expressions which the King had used respecting the test were, on the thirteenth of
November, taken into consideration. It was resolved, after much discussion, that an address should be presented to him,
reminding him that he could not legally continue to employ officers who refused to qualify, and pressing him to give
such directions as might quiet the apprehensions and jealousies of his people. 22

A motion was then made that the Lords should be requested to join in the address. Whether this motion was honestly
made by the opposition, in the hope that the concurrence of the peers would add weight to the remonstrance, or artfully
made by the courtiers, in the hope that a breach between the Houses might be the consequence, it is now impossible to
discover. The proposition was rejected. 23

The House then resolved itself into a committee, for the purpose of considering the amount of supply to be granted.
The King wanted fourteen hundred thousand pounds: but the ministers saw that it would be vain to ask for so large a
sum. The Chancellor of the Exchequer mentioned twelve hundred thousand pounds. The chiefs of the opposition replied
that to vote for such a grant would be to vote for the permanence of the present military establishment: they were
disposed to give only so much as might suffice to keep the regular troops on foot till the militia could be remodelled
and they therefore proposed four hundred thousand pounds. The courtiers exclaimed against this motion as unworthy of
the House and disrespectful to the King: but they were manfully encountered. One of the western members, John Windham,
who sate for Salisbury, especially distinguished himself. He had always, he said, looked with dread and aversion on
standing armies; and recent experience had strengthened those feelings. He then ventured to touch on a theme which had
hitherto been studiously avoided. He described the desolation of the western counties. The people, he said, were weary
of the oppression of the troops, weary of free quarters, of depredations, of still fouler crimes which the law called
felonies, but for which, when perpetrated by this class of felons, no redress could be obtained. The King’s servants
had indeed told the House that excellent rules had been laid down for the government of the army; but none could
venture to say that these rules had been observed. What, then, was the inevitable inference? Did not the contrast
between the paternal injunctions issued from the throne and the insupportable tyranny of the soldiers prove that the
army was even now too strong for the prince as well as for the people? The Commons might surely, with perfect
consistency, while they reposed entire confidence in the intentions of His Majesty, refuse to make any addition to a
force which it was clear that His Majesty could not manage.

The motion that the sum to be granted should not exceed four hundred thousand pounds, was lost by twelve votes. This
victory of the ministers was little better than a defeat. The leaders of the country party, nothing disheartened,
retreated a little, made another stand, and proposed the sum of seven hundred thousand pounds. The committee divided
again, and the courtiers were beaten by two hundred and twelve votes to one hundred and seventy. 24

On the following day the Commons went in procession to Whitehall with their address on the subject of the test. The
King received them on his throne. The address was drawn up in respectful and affectionate language; for the great
majority of those who had voted for it were zealously and even superstitiously loyal, and had readily agreed to insert
some complimentary phrases, and to omit every word which the courtiers thought offensive. The answer of James was a
cold and sullen reprimand. He declared himself greatly displeased and amazed that the Commons should have profited so
little by the admonition which he had given them. “But,” said he, “however you may proceed on your part, I will be very
steady in all the promises which I have made to you.” 25

The Commons reassembled in their chamber, discontented, yet somewhat overawed. To most of them the King was still an
object of filial reverence. Three more years filled with injuries, and with insults more galling than injuries, were
scarcely sufficient to dissolve the ties which bound the Cavalier gentry to the throne.

The Speaker repeated the substance of the King’s reply. There was, for some time, a solemn stillness; then the order
of the day was read in regular course; and the House went into committee on the bill for remodelling the militia.

In a few hours, however, the spirit of the opposition revived. When, at the close of the day, the Speaker resumed
the chair, Wharton, the boldest and most active of the Whigs, proposed that a time should be appointed for taking His
Majesty’s answer into consideration. John Coke, member for Derby, though a noted Tory, seconded Wharton. “I hope,” he
said, “that we are all Englishmen, and that we shall not be frightened from our duty by a few high words.”

It was manfully, but not wisely, spoken. The whole House was in a tempest. “Take down his words,” “To the bar,” “To
the Tower,” resounded from every side. Those who were most lenient proposed that the offender should be reprimanded:
but the ministers vehemently insisted that he should be sent to prison. The House might pardon, they said, offences
committed against itself, but had no right to pardon an insult offered to the crown. Coke was sent to the Tower. The
indiscretion of one man had deranged the whole system of tactics which had been so ably concerted by the chiefs of the
opposition. It was in vain that, at that moment, Edward Seymour attempted to rally his followers, exhorted them to fix
a day for discussing the King’s answer, and expressed his confidence that the discussion would be conducted with the
respect due from subjects to the sovereign. The members were so much cowed by the royal displeasure, and so much
incensed by the rudeness of Coke, that it would not have been safe to divide. 26

The House adjourned; and the ministers flattered themselves that the spirit of opposition was quelled. But on the
morrow, the nineteenth of November, new and alarming symptoms appeared. The time had arrived for taking into
consideration the petitions which had been presented from all parts of England against the late elections. When, on the
first meeting of the Parliament, Seymour had complained of the force and fraud by which the government had prevented
the sense of constituent bodies from being fairly taken, he had found no seconder. But many who had then flinched from
his side had subsequently taken heart, and, with Sir John Lowther, member for Cumberland, at their head, had, before
the recess, suggested that there ought to be an enquiry into the abuses which had so much excited the public mind. The
House was now in a much more angry temper; and many voices were boldly raised in menace and accusation. The ministers
were told that the nation expected, and should have, signal redress. Meanwhile it was dexterously intimated that the
best atonement which a gentleman who had been brought into the House by irregular means could make to the public was to
use his ill acquired power in defence of the religion and liberties of his country. No member who, in that crisis, did
his duty had anything to fear. It might be necessary to unseat him; but the whole influence of the opposition should be
employed to procure his reelection. 27

On the same day it became clear that the spirit of opposition had spread from the Commons to the Lords, and even to
the episcopal bench. William Cavendish, Earl of Devonshire, took the lead in the Upper House; and he was well qualified
to do so. In wealth and influence he was second to none of the English nobles; and the general voice designated him as
the finest gentleman of his time. His magnificence, his taste, his talents, his classical learning, his high spirit,
the grace and urbanity of his manners, were admitted by his enemies. His eulogists, unhappily, could not pretend that
his morals had escaped untainted from the widespread contagion of that age. Though an enemy of Popery and of arbitrary
power, he had been averse to extreme courses, had been willing, when the Exclusion Bill was lost, to agree to a
compromise, and had never been concerned in the illegal and imprudent schemes which had brought discredit on the Whig
party. But, though regretting part of the conduct of his friends, he had not, on that account, failed to perform
zealously the most arduous and perilous duties of friendship. He had stood near Russell at the bar, had parted from him
on the sad morning of the execution with close embraces and with many bitter tears, nay, had offered to manage an
escape at the hazard of his own life. 28 This great nobleman
now proposed that a day should be fixed for considering the royal speech. It was contended, on the other side, that the
Lords, by voting thanks for the speech, had precluded themselves from complaining of it. But this objection was treated
with contempt by Halifax. “Such thanks,” he said with the sarcastic pleasantry in which he excelled, “imply no
approbation. We are thankful whenever our gracious Sovereign deigns to speak to us. Especially thankful are we when, as
on the present occasion, he speaks out, and gives us fair warning of what we are to suffer.” 29 Doctor Henry Compton, Bishop of London, spoke strongly for the motion. Though
not gifted with eminent abilities, nor deeply versed in the learning of his profession, he was always heard by the
House with respect; for he was one of the few clergymen who could, in that age, boast of noble blood. His own loyalty,
and the loyalty of his family, had been signally proved. His father, the second Earl of Northampton, had fought bravely
for King Charles the First, and, surrounded by the parliamentary soldiers, had fallen, sword in hand, refusing to give
or take quarter. The Bishop himself, before he was ordained, had borne arms in the Guards; and, though he generally did
his best to preserve the gravity and sobriety befitting a prelate, some flashes of his military spirit would, to the
last, occasionally break forth. He had been entrusted with the religious education of the two Princesses, and had
acquitted himself of that important duty in a manner which had satisfied all good Protestants, and had secured to him
considerable influence over the minds of his pupils, especially of the Lady Anne. 30 He now declared that he was empowered to speak the sense of his brethren, and
that, in their opinion and in his own, the whole civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the realm was in danger.

One of the most remarkable speeches of that day was made by a young man, whose eccentric career was destined to
amaze Europe. This was Charles Mordaunt, Viscount Mordaunt, widely renowned, many years later, as Earl of Peterborough.
Already he had given abundant proofs of his courage, of his capacity, and of that strange unsoundness of mind which
made his courage and capacity almost useless to his country. Already he had distinguished himself as a wit and a
scholar, as a soldier and a sailor. He had even set his heart on rivalling Bourdaloue and Bossuet. Though an avowed
freethinker, he had sate up all night at sea to compose sermons, and had with great difficulty been prevented from
edifying the crew of a man of war with his pious oratory. 31
He now addressed the House of Peers, for the first time, with characteristic eloquence, sprightliness, and audacity. He
blamed the Commons for not having taken a bolder line. “They have been afraid,” he said, “to speak out. They have
talked of apprehensions and jealousies. What have apprehension and jealousy to do here? Apprehension and jealousy are
the feelings with which we regard future and uncertain evils. The evil which we are considering is neither future nor
uncertain. A standing army exists. It is officered by Papists. We have no foreign enemy. There is no rebellion in the
land. For what, then, is this force maintained, except for the purpose of subverting our laws and establishing that
arbitrary power which is so justly abhorred by Englishmen?” 32

Jeffreys spoke against the motion in the coarse and savage style of which he was a master; but he soon found that it
was not quite so easy to browbeat the proud and powerful barons of England in their own hall, as to intimidate
advocates whose bread depended on his favour or prisoners whose necks were at his mercy. A man whose life has been
passed in attacking and domineering, whatever may be his talents and courage, generally makes a mean figure when he is
vigorously assailed, for, being unaccustomed to stand on the defensive, he becomes confused; and the knowledge that all
those whom he has insulted are enjoying his confusion confuses him still more. Jeffreys was now, for the first time
since he had become a great man, encountered on equal terms by adversaries who did not fear him. To the general
delight, he passed at once from the extreme of insolence to the extreme of meanness, and could not refrain from weeping
with rage and vexation. 33 Nothing indeed was wanting to his
humiliation; for the House was crowded by about a hundred peers, a larger number than had voted even on the great day
of the Exclusion Bill. The King, too, was present. His brother had been in the habit of attending the sittings of the
Lords for amusement, and used often to say that a debate was as entertaining as a comedy. James came, not to be
diverted, but in the hope that his presence might impose some restraint on the discussion. He was disappointed. The
sense of the House was so strongly manifested that, after a closing speech, of great keenness, from Halifax, the
courtiers did not venture to divide. An early day was fixed for taking the royal speech into consideration; and it was
ordered that every peer who was not at a distance from Westminster should be in his place. 34

On the following morning the King came down, in his robes, to the House of Lords. The Usher of the Black Rod
summoned the Commons to the bar; and the Chancellor announced that the Parliament was prorogued to the tenth of
February. 35 The members who had voted against the court were
dismissed from the public service. Charles Fox quitted the Pay Office. The Bishop of London ceased to be Dean of the
Chapel Royal, and his name was struck out of the list of Privy Councillors.

The effect of the prorogation was to put an end to a legal proceeding of the highest importance. Thomas Grey, Earl
of Stamford, sprung from one of the most illustrious houses of England, had been recently arrested and committed close
prisoner to the Tower on a charge of high treason. He was accused of having been concerned in the Rye House Plot. A
true bill had been found against him by the grand jury of the City of London, and had been removed into the House of
Lords, the only court before which a temporal peer can, during a session of Parliament, be arraigned for any offence
higher than a misdemeanour. The first of December had been fixed for the trial; and orders had been given that
Westminster Hall should be fitted up with seats and hangings. In consequence of the prorogation, the hearing of the
cause was postponed for an indefinite period; and Stamford soon regained his liberty. 36

Three other Whigs of great eminence were in confinement when the session closed, Charles Gerard, Lord Gerard of
Brandon, eldest son of the Earl of Macclesfield, John Hampden, grandson of the renowned leader of the Long Parliament,
and Henry Booth, Lord Delamere. Gerard and Hampden were accused of having taken part in the Rye House Plot: Delamere of
having abetted the Western insurrection.

It was not the intention of the government to put either Gerard or Hampden to death. Grey had stipulated for their
lives before he consented to become a witness against them. 37 But there was a still stronger reason for sparing them. They were heirs to large property: but
their fathers were still living. The court could therefore get little in the way of forfeiture, and might get much in
the way of ransom. Gerard was tried, and, from the very scanty accounts which have come down to us, seems to have
defended himself with great spirit and force. He boasted of the exertions and sacrifices made by his family in the
cause of Charles the First, and proved Rumsey, the witness who had murdered Russell by telling one story and Cornish by
telling another, to be utterly undeserving of credit. The jury, with some hesitation, found a verdict of Guilty. After
long imprisonment Gerard was suffered to redeem himself. 38
Hampden had inherited the political opinions and a large share of the abilities of his grandfather, but had degenerated
from the uprightness and the courage by which his grandfather had been distinguished. It appears that the prisoner was,
with cruel cunning, long kept in an agony of suspense, in order that his family might be induced to pay largely for
mercy. His spirit sank under the terrors of death. When brought to the bar of the Old Bailey he not only pleaded
guilty, but disgraced the illustrious name which he bore by abject submissions and entreaties. He protested that he had
not been privy to the design of assassination; but he owned that he had meditated rebellion, professed deep repentance
for his offence, implored the intercession of the Judges, and vowed that, if the royal clemency were extended to him,
his whole life should be passed in evincing his gratitude for such goodness. The Whigs were furious at his
pusillanimity, and loudly declared him to be far more deserving of blame than Grey, who, even in turning King’s
evidence, had preserved a certain decorum. Hampden’s life was spared; but his family paid several thousand pounds to
the Chancellor. Some courtiers of less note succeeded in extorting smaller sums. The unhappy man had spirit enough to
feel keenly the degradation to which he had stooped. He survived the day of his ignominy several years. He lived to see
his party triumphant, to be once more an important member of it, to rise high in the state, and to make his persecutors
tremble in their turn. But his prosperity was embittered by one insupportable recollection. He never regained his
cheerfulness, and at length died by his own hand. 39

That Delamere, if he had needed the royal mercy, would have found it is not very probable. It is certain that every
advantage which the letter of the law gave to the government was used against him without scruple or shame. He was in a
different situation from that in which Stamford stood. The indictment against Stamford had been removed into the House
of Lords during the session of Parliament, and therefore could not be prosecuted till the Parliament should reassemble.
All the peers would then have voices, and would be judges as well of law as of fact. But the bill against Delamere was
not found till after the prorogation. 40 He was therefore
within the jurisdiction of the Court of the Lord High Steward. This court, to which belongs, during a recess of
Parliament, the cognizance of treasons and felonies committed by temporal peers, was then so constituted that no
prisoner charged with a political offence could expect an impartial trial. The King named a Lord High Steward. The Lord
High Steward named, at his discretion, certain peers to sit on their accused brother. The number to be summoned was
indefinite. No challenge was allowed. A simple majority, provided that it consisted of twelve, was sufficient to
convict. The High Steward was sole judge of the law; and the Lords Triers formed merely a jury to pronounce on the
question of fact. Jeffreys was appointed High Steward. He selected thirty Triers; and the selection was characteristic
of the man and of the times. All the thirty were in politics vehemently opposed to the prisoner. Fifteen of them were
colonels of regiments, and might be removed from their lucrative commands at the pleasure of the King. Among the
remaining fifteen were the Lord Treasurer, the principal Secretary of State, the Steward of the Household, the
Comptroller of the Household, the Captain of the Band of Gentlemen Pensioners, the Queen’s Chamberlain, and other
persons who were bound by strong ties of interest to the court. Nevertheless, Delamere had some great advantages over
the humbler culprits who had been arraigned at the Old Bailey. There the jurymen, violent partisans, taken for a single
day by courtly Sheriffs from the mass of society and speedily sent back to mingle with that mass, were under no
restraint of shame, and being little accustomed to weigh evidence, followed without scruple the directions of the
bench. But in the High Steward’s Court every Trier was a man of some experience in grave affairs. Every Trier filled a
considerable space in the public eye. Every Trier, beginning from the lowest, had to rise separately and to give in his
verdict, on his honour, before a great concourse. That verdict, accompanied with his name, would go to every part of
the world, and would live in history. Moreover, though the selected nobles were all Tories, and almost all placemen,
many of them had begun to look with uneasiness on the King’s proceedings, and to doubt whether the case of Delamere
might not soon be their own.

Jeffreys conducted himself, as was his wont, insolently and unjustly. He had indeed an old grudge to stimulate his
zeal. He had been Chief Justice of Chester when Delamere, then Mr. Booth, represented that county in Parliament. Booth
had bitterly complained to the Commons that the dearest interests of his constituents were intrusted to a drunken
jackpudding. 41 The revengeful judge was now not ashamed to
resort to artifices which even in an advocate would have been culpable. He reminded the Lords Triers, in very
significant language, that Delamere had, in Parliament, objected to the bill for attainting Monmouth, a fact which was
not, and could not be, in evidence. But it was not in the power of Jeffreys to overawe a synod of peers as he had been
in the habit of overawing common juries. The evidence for the crown would probably have been thought amply sufficient
on the Western Circuit or at the City Sessions, but could not for a moment impose on such men as Rochester, Godolphin,
and Churchill; nor were they, with all their faults, depraved enough to condemn a fellow creature to death against the
plainest rules of justice. Grey, Wade, and Goodenough were produced, but could only repeat what they had heard said by
Monmouth and by Wildman’s emissaries. The principal witness for the prosecution, a miscreant named Saxton, who had been
concerned in the rebellion, and was now labouring to earn his pardon by swearing against all who were obnoxious to the
government, who proved by overwhelming evidence to have told a series of falsehoods. All the Triers, from Churchill
who, as junior baron, spoke first, up to the Treasurer, pronounced, on their honour, that Delamere was not guilty. The
gravity and pomp of the whole proceeding made a deep impression even on the Nuncio, accustomed as he was to the
ceremonies of Rome, ceremonies which, in solemnity and splendour, exceed all that the rest of the world can show.
42 The King, who was present, and was unable to complain of a
decision evidently just, went into a rage with Saxton, and vowed that the wretch should first be pilloried before
Westminster Hall for perjury, and then sent down to the West to be hanged, drawn, and quartered for treason.43

The public joy at the acquittal of Delamere was great. The reign of terror was over. The innocent began to breathe
freely, and false accusers to tremble. One letter written on this occasion is scarcely to be read without tears. The
widow of Russell, in her retirement, learned the good news with mingled feelings. “I do bless God,” she wrote, “that he
has caused some stop to be put to the shedding of blood in this poor land. Yet when I should rejoice with them that do
rejoice, I seek a corner to weep in. I find I am capable of no more gladness; but every new circumstance, the very
comparing my night of sorrow after such a day, with theirs of joy, does, from a reflection of one kind or another, rack
my uneasy mind. Though I am far from wishing the close of theirs like mine, yet I cannot refrain giving some time to
lament mine was not like theirs.” 44

And now the tide was on the turn. The death of Stafford, witnessed with signs of tenderness and remorse by the
populace to whose rage he was sacrificed, marks the close of one proscription. The acquittal of Delamere marks the
close of another. The crimes which had disgraced the stormy tribuneship of Shaftesbury had been fearfully expiated. The
blood of innocent Papists had been avenged more than tenfold by the blood of zealous Protestants. Another great
reaction had commenced. Factions were fast taking new forms. Old allies were separating. Old enemies were uniting.
Discontent was spreading fast through all the ranks of the party lately dominant. A hope, still indeed faint and
indefinite, of victory and revenge, animated the party which had lately seemed to be extinct. Amidst such circumstances
the eventful and troubled year 1685 terminated, and the year 1686 began.

The prorogation had relieved the King from the gentle remonstrances of the Houses: but he had still to listen to
remonstrances, similar in effect, though uttered in a tone even more cautious and subdued. Some men who had hitherto
served him but too strenuously for their own fame and for the public welfare had begun to feel painful misgivings, and
occasionally ventured to hint a small part of what they felt.

During many years the zeal of the English Tory for hereditary monarchy and his zeal for the established religion had
grown up together and had strengthened each other. It had never occurred to him that the two sentiments, which seemed
inseparable and even identical, might one day be found to be not only distinct but incompatible. From the commencement
of the strife between the Stuarts and the Commons, the cause of the crown and the cause of the hierarchy had, to all
appearance, been one. Charles the First was regarded by the Church as her martyr. If Charles the Second had plotted
against her, he had plotted in secret. In public he had ever professed himself her grateful and devoted son, had knelt
at her altars, and, in spite of his loose morals, had succeeded in persuading the great body of her adherents that he
felt a sincere preference for her. Whatever conflicts, therefore, the honest Cavalier might have had to maintain
against Whigs and Roundheads he had at least been hitherto undisturbed by conflict in his own mind. He had seen the
path of duty plain before him. Through good and evil he was to be true to Church and King. But, if those two august and
venerable powers, which had hitherto seemed to be so closely connected that those who were true to one could not be
false to the other, should be divided by a deadly enmity, what course was the orthodox Royalist to take? What situation
could be more trying than that in which he would be placed, distracted between two duties equally sacred, between two
affections equally ardent? How was he to give to Caesar all that was Caesar’s, and yet to withhold from God no part of
what was God’s? None who felt thus could have watched, without deep concern and gloomy forebodings, the dispute between
the King and the Parliament on the subject of the test. If James could even now be induced to reconsider his course, to
let the Houses reassemble, and to comply with their wishes, all might yet be well.

Such were the sentiments of the King’s two kinsmen, the Earls of Clarendon and Rochester. The power and favour of
these noblemen seemed to be great indeed. The younger brother was Lord Treasurer and prime minister; and the elder,
after holding the Privy Seal during some months, had been appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The venerable Ormond
took the same side. Middleton and Preston, who, as managers of the House of Commons, had recently learned by proof how
dear the established religion was to the loyal gentry of England, were also for moderate counsels.

At the very beginning of the new year these statesmen and the great party which they represented had to suffer a
cruel mortification. That the late King had been at heart a Roman Catholic had been, during some months, suspected and
whispered, but not formally announced. The disclosure, indeed, could not be made without great scandal. Charles had,
times without number, declared himself a Protestant, and had been in the habit of receiving the Eucharist from the
Bishops of the Established Church. Those Protestants who had stood by him in his difficulties, and who still cherished
an affectionate remembrance of him, must be filled with shame and indignation by learning that his whole life had been
a lie, that, while he professed to belong to their communion, he had really regarded them as heretics, and that the
demagogues who had represented him as a concealed Papist had been the only people who had formed a correct judgment of
his character. Even Lewis understood enough of the state of public feeling in England to be aware that the divulging of
the truth might do harm, and had, of his own accord, promised to keep the conversion of Charles strictly secret.
45 James, while his power was still new, had thought that on
this point it was advisable to be cautious, and had not ventured to inter his brother with the rites of the Church of
Rome. For a time, therefore, every man was at liberty to believe what he wished. The Papists claimed the deceased
prince as their proselyte. The Whigs execrated him as a hypocrite and a renegade. The Tories regarded the report of his
apostasy as a calumny which Papists and Whigs had, for very different reasons, a common interest in circulating. James
now took a step which greatly disconcerted the whole Anglican party. Two papers, in which were set forth very concisely
the arguments ordinarily used by Roman Catholics in controversy with Protestants, had been found in Charles’s strong
box, and appeared to be in his handwriting. These papers James showed triumphantly to several Protestants, and declared
that, to his knowledge, his brother had lived and died a Roman Catholic. 46 One of the persons to whom the manuscripts were exhibited was Archbishop Sancroft. He read them
with much emotion, and remained silent. Such silence was only the natural effect of a struggle between respect and
vexation. But James supposed that the Primate was struck dumb by the irresistible force of reason, and eagerly
challenged his Grace to produce, with the help of the whole episcopal bench, a satisfactory reply. “Let me have a solid
answer, and in a gentlemanlike style; and it may have the effect which you so much desire of bringing me over to your
Church.” The Archbishop mildly said that, in his opinion, such an answer might, without much difficulty, be written,
but declined the controversy on the plea of reverence for the memory of his deceased master. This plea the King
considered as the subterfuge of a vanquished disputant.47 Had
he been well acquainted with the polemical literature of the preceding century and a half, he would have known that the
documents to which he attached so much value might have been composed by any lad of fifteen in the college of Douay,
and contained nothing which had not, in the opinion of all Protestant divines, been ten thousand times refuted. In his
ignorant exultation he ordered these tracts to be printed with the utmost pomp of typography, and appended to them a
declaration attested by his sign manual, and certifying that the originals were in his brother’s own hand. James
himself distributed the whole edition among his courtiers and among the people of humbler rank who crowded round his
coach. He gave one copy to a young woman of mean condition whom he supposed to be of his own religious persuasion, and
assured her that she would be greatly edified and comforted by the perusal. In requital of his kindness she delivered
to him, a few days later, an epistle adjuring him to come out of the mystical Babylon and to dash from his lips the cup
of fornications. 48

These things gave great uneasiness to Tory churchmen. Nor were the most respectable Roman Catholic noblemen much
better pleased. They might indeed have been excused if passion had, at this conjuncture, made them deaf to the voice of
prudence and justice: for they had suffered much. Protestant jealousy had degraded them from the rank to which they
were born, had closed the doors of the Parliament House on the heirs of barons who had signed the Charter, had
pronounced the command of a company of foot too high a trust for the descendants of the generals who had conquered at
Flodden and Saint Quentin. There was scarcely one eminent peer attached to the old faith whose honour, whose estate,
whose life had not been in jeopardy, who had not passed months in the Tower, who had not often anticipated for himself
the fate of Stafford. Men who had been so long and cruelly oppressed might have been pardoned if they had eagerly
seized the first opportunity of obtaining at once greatness and revenge. But neither fanaticism nor ambition, neither
resentment for past wrongs nor the intoxication produced by sudden good fortune, could prevent the most eminent Roman
Catholics from perceiving that the prosperity which they at length enjoyed was only temporary, and, unless wisely used,
might be fatal to them. They had been taught, by a cruel experience, that the antipathy of the nation to their religion
was not a fancy which would yield to the mandate of a prince, but a profound sentiment, the growth of five generations,
diffused through all ranks and parties, and intertwined not less closely with the principles of the Tory than with the
principles of the Whig. It was indeed in the power of the King, by the exercise of his prerogative of mercy, to suspend
the operation of the penal laws. It might hereafter be in his power, by discreet management, to obtain from the
Parliament a repeal of the acts which imposed civil disabilities on those who professed his religion. But, if he
attempted to subdue the Protestant feeling of England by rude means, it was easy to see that the violent compression of
so powerful and elastic a spring would be followed by as violent a recoil. The Roman Catholic peers, by prematurely
attempting to force their way into the Privy Council and the House of Lords, might lose their mansions and their ample
estates, and might end their lives as traitors on Tower Hill, or as beggars at the porches of Italian convents.

Such was the feeling of William Herbert, Earl of Powis, who was generally regarded as the chief of the Roman
Catholic aristocracy, and who, according to Oates, was to have been prime minister if the Popish plot had succeeded.
John Lord Bellasyse took the same view of the state of affairs. In his youth he had fought gallantly for Charles the
First, had been rewarded after the Restoration with high honours and commands, and had quitted them when the Test Act
was passed. With these distinguished leaders all the noblest and most opulent members of their church concurred, except
Lord Arundell of Wardour, an old man fast sinking into second childhood.

But there was at the court a small knot of Roman Catholics whose hearts had been ulcerated by old injuries, whose
heads had been turned by recent elevation, who were impatient to climb to the highest honours of the state, and who,
having little to lose, were not troubled by thoughts of the day of reckoning. One of these was Roger Palmer, Earl of
Castelmaine in Ireland, and husband of the Duchess of Cleveland. His title had notoriously been purchased by his wife’s
dishonour and his own. His fortune was small. His temper, naturally ungentle, had been exasperated by his domestic
vexations, by the public reproaches, and by what he had undergone in the days of the Popish plot. He had been long a
prisoner, and had at length been tried for his life. Happily for him, he was not put to the bar till the first burst of
popular rage had spent itself, and till the credit of the false witnesses had been blown upon. He had therefore
escaped, though very narrowly. 49 With Castelmaine was allied
one of the most favoured of his wife’s hundred lovers, Henry Jermyn, whom James had lately created a peer by the title
of Lord Dover. Jermyn had been distinguished more than twenty years before by his vagrant amours and his desperate
duels. He was now ruined by play, and was eager to retrieve his fallen fortunes by means of lucrative posts from which
the laws excluded him. 50 To the same party belonged an
intriguing pushing Irishman named White, who had been much abroad, who had served the House of Austria as something
between an envoy and a spy, and who had been rewarded for his services with the title of Marquess of Albeville.
51

Soon after the prorogation this reckless faction was strengthened by an important reinforcement. Richard Talbot,
Earl of Tyrconnel, the fiercest and most uncompromising of all those who hated the liberties and religion of England,
arrived at court from Dublin.

Talbot was descended from an old Norman family which had been long settled in Leinster, which had there sunk into
degeneracy, which had adopted the manners of the Celts, which had, like the Celts, adhered to the old religion, and
which had taken part with the Celts in the rebellion of 1641. In his youth he had been one of the most noted sharpers
and bullies of London. He had been introduced to Charles and James when they were exiles in Flanders, as a man fit and
ready for the infamous service of assassinating the Protector. Soon after the Restoration, Talbot attempted to obtain
the favour of the royal family by a service more infamous still. A plea was wanted which might justify the Duke of York
in breaking that promise of marriage by which he had obtained from Anne Hyde the last proof of female affection. Such a
plea Talbot, in concert with some of his dissolute companions, undertook to furnish. They agreed to describe the poor
young lady as a creature without virtue, shame, or delicacy, and made up long romances about tender interviews and
stolen favours. Talbot in particular related how, in one of his secret visits to her, he had unluckily overturned the
Chancellor’s inkstand upon a pile of papers, and how cleverly she had averted a discovery by laying the blame of the
accident on her monkey. These stories, which, if they had been true, would never have passed the lips of any but the
basest of mankind, were pure inventions. Talbot was soon forced to own that they were so; and he owned it without a
blush. The injured lady became Duchess of York. Had her husband been a man really upright and honourable, he would have
driven from his presence with indignation and contempt the wretches who had slandered her. But one of the peculiarities
of James’s character was that no act, however wicked and shameful, which had been prompted by a desire to gain his
favour, ever seemed to him deserving of disapprobation. Talbot continued to frequent the court, appeared daily with
brazen front before the princess whose ruin he had plotted, and was installed into the lucrative post of chief pandar
to her husband. In no long time Whitehall was thrown into confusion by the news that Dick Talbot, as he was commonly
called, had laid a plan to murder the Duke of Ormond. The bravo was sent to the Tower: but in a few days he was again
swaggering about the galleries, and carrying billets backward and forward between his patron and the ugliest maids of
honour. It was in vain that old and discreet counsellors implored the royal brothers not to countenance this bad man,
who had nothing to recommend him except his fine person and his taste in dress. Talbot was not only welcome at the
palace when the bottle or the dicebox was going round, but was heard with attention on matters of business. He affected
the character of an Irish patriot, and pleaded, with great audacity, and sometimes with success, the cause of his
countrymen whose estates had been confiscated. He took care, however, to be well paid for his services, and succeeded
in acquiring, partly by the sale of his influence, partly by gambling, and partly by pimping, an estate of three
thousand pounds a year. For under an outward show of levity, profusion, improvidence, and eccentric impudence, he was
in truth one of the most mercenary and crafty of mankind. He was now no longer young, and was expiating by severe
sufferings the dissoluteness of his youth: but age and disease had made no essential change in his character and
manners. He still, whenever he opened his mouth, ranted, cursed and swore with such frantic violence that superficial
observers set him down for the wildest of libertines. The multitude was unable to conceive that a man who, even when
sober, was more furious and boastful than others when they were drunk, and who seemed utterly incapable of disguising
any emotion or keeping any secret, could really be a coldhearted, farsighted, scheming sycophant. Yet such a man was
Talbot. In truth his hypocrisy was of a far higher and rarer sort than the hypocrisy which had flourished in Barebone’s
Parliament. For the consummate hypocrite is not he who conceals vice behind the semblance of virtue, but he who makes
the vice which he has no objection to show a stalking horse to cover darker and more profitable vice which it is for
his interest to hide.

Talbot, raised by James to the earldom of Tyrconnel, had commanded the troops in Ireland during the nine months
which elapsed between the death of Charles and the commencement of the viceroyalty of Clarendon. When the new Lord
Lieutenant was about to leave London for Dublin, the General was summoned from Dublin to London. Dick Talbot had long
been well known on the road which he had now to travel. Between Chester and the capital there was not an inn where he
had not been in a brawl. Wherever he came he pressed horses in defiance of law, swore at the cooks and postilions, and
almost raised mobs by his insolent rodomontades. The Reformation, he told the people, had ruined everything. But fine
times were coming. The Catholics would soon be uppermost. The heretics should pay for all. Raving and blaspheming
incessantly, like a demoniac, he came to the court. 52 As
soon as he was there, he allied himself closely with Castelmaine, Dover, and Albeville. These men called with one voice
for war on the constitution of the Church and the State. They told their master that he owed it to his religion and to
the dignity of his crown to stand firm against the outcry of heretical demagogues, and to let the Parliament see from
the first that he would be master in spite of opposition, and that the only effect of opposition would be to make him a
hard master.

Each of the two parties into which the court was divided had zealous foreign allies. The ministers of Spain, of the
Empire, and of the States General were now as anxious to support Rochester as they had formerly been to support
Halifax. All the influence of Barillon was employed on the other side; and Barillon was assisted by another French
agent, inferior to him in station, but far superior in abilities, Bonrepaux. Barillon was not without parts, and
possessed in large measure the graces and accomplishments which then distinguished the French gentry. But his capacity
was scarcely equal to what his great place required. He had become sluggish and self indulgent, liked the pleasures of
society and of the table better than business, and on great emergencies generally waited for admonitions and even for
reprimands from Versailles before he showed much activity. 53
Bonrepaux had raised himself from obscurity by the intelligence and industry which he had exhibited as a clerk in the
department of the marine, and was esteemed an adept in the mystery of mercantile politics. At the close of the year
1685, he was sent to London, charged with several special commissions of high importance. He was to lay the ground for
a treaty of commerce; he was to ascertain and report the state of the English fleets and dockyards; and he was to make
some overtures to the Huguenot refugees, who, it was supposed, had been so effectually tamed by penury and exile, that
they would thankfully accept almost any terms of reconciliation. The new Envoy’s origin was plebeian, his stature was
dwarfish, his countenance was ludicrously ugly, and his accent was that of his native Gascony: but his strong sense,
his keen penetration, and his lively wit eminently qualified him for his post. In spite of every disadvantage of birth
and figure he was soon known as a most pleasing companion and as a most skilful diplomatist. He contrived, while
flirting with the Duchess of Mazarin, discussing literary questions with Waller and Saint Evremond, and corresponding
with La Fontaine, to acquire a considerable knowledge of English politics. His skill in maritime affairs recommended
him to James, who had, during many years, paid close attention to the business of the Admiralty, and understood that
business as well as he was capable of understanding anything. They conversed every day long and freely about the state
of the shipping and the dock-yards. The result of this intimacy was, as might have been expected, that the keen and
vigilant Frenchman conceived a great contempt for the King’s abilities and character. The world, he said, had much
overrated His Britannic Majesty, who had less capacity than Charles, and not more virtues. 54

The two envoys of Lewis, though pursuing one object, very judiciously took different paths. They made a partition of
the court. Bonrepaux lived chiefly with Rochester and Rochester’s adherents. Barillon’s connections were chiefly with
the opposite faction. The consequence was that they sometimes saw the same event in different points of view. The best
account now extant of the contest which at this time agitated Whitehall is to be found in their despatches.

As each of the two parties at the Court of James had the support of foreign princes, so each had also the support of
an ecclesiastical authority to which the King paid great deference. The Supreme Pontiff was for legal and moderate
courses; and his sentiments were expressed by the Nuncio and by the Vicar Apostolic. 55 On the other side was a body of which the weight balanced even the weight of
the Papacy, the mighty Order of Jesus.

That at this conjuncture these two great spiritual powers, once, as it seemed, inseparably allied, should have been
opposed to each other, is a most important and remarkable circumstance. During a period of little less than a thousand
years the regular clergy had been the chief support of the Holy See. By that See they had been protected from episcopal
interference; and the protection which they had received had been amply repaid. But for their exertions it is probable
that the Bishop of Rome would have been merely the honorary president of a vast aristocracy of prelates. It was by the
aid of the Benedictines that Gregory the Seventh was enabled to contend at once against the Franconian Caesars and
against the secular priesthood. It was by the aid of the Dominicans and Franciscans that Innocent the Third crushed the
Albigensian sectaries. In the sixteenth century the Pontificate exposed to new dangers more formidable than had ever
before threatened it, was saved by a new religious order, which was animated by intense enthusiasm and organized with
exquisite skill. When the Jesuits came to the rescue of the Papacy, they found it in extreme peril: but from that
moment the tide of battle turned. Protestantism, which had, during a whole generation, carried all before it, was
stopped in its progress, and rapidly beaten back from the foot of the Alps to the shores of the Baltic. Before the
Order had existed a hundred years, it had filled the whole world with memorials of great things done and suffered for
the faith. No religious community could produce a list of men so variously distinguished:— none had extended its
operations over so vast a space; yet in none had there ever been such perfect unity of feeling and action. There was no
region of the globe, no walk of speculative or of active life, in which Jesuits were not to be found. They guided the
counsels of Kings. They deciphered Latin inscriptions. They observed the motions of Jupiter’s satellites. They
published whole libraries, controversy, casuistry, history, treatises on optics, Alcaic odes, editions of the fathers,
madrigals, catechisms, and lampoons. The liberal education of youth passed almost entirely into their hands, and was
conducted by them with conspicuous ability. They appear to have discovered the precise point to which intellectual
culture can be carried without risk of intellectual emancipation. Enmity itself was compelled to own that, in the art
of managing and forming the tender mind, they had no equals. Meanwhile they assiduously and successfully cultivated the
eloquence of the pulpit. With still greater assiduity and still greater success they applied themselves to the ministry
of the confessional. Throughout Catholic Europe the secrets of every government and of almost every family of note were
in their keeping. They glided from one Protestant country to another under innumerable disguises, as gay Cavaliers, as
simple rustics, as Puritan preachers. They wandered to countries which neither mercantile avidity nor liberal curiosity
had ever impelled any stranger to explore. They were to be found in the garb of Mandarins, superintending the
observatory at Pekin. They were to be found, spade in hand, teaching the rudiments of agriculture to the savages of
Paraguay. Yet, whatever might be their residence, whatever might be their employment, their spirit was the same, entire
devotion to the common cause, implicit obedience to the central authority. None of them had chosen his dwelling place
or his vocation for himself. Whether the Jesuit should live under the arctic circle or under the equator, whether he
should pass his life in arranging gems and collating manuscripts at the Vatican or in persuading naked barbarians in
the southern hemisphere not to eat each other, were matters which he left with profound submission to the decision of
others. If he was wanted at Lima, he was on the Atlantic in the next fleet. If he was wanted at Bagdad, he was toiling
through the desert with the next caravan. If his ministry was needed in some country where his life was more insecure
than that of a wolf, where it was a crime to harbour him, where the heads and quarters of his brethren, fixed in the
public places, showed him what he had to expect, he went without remonstrance or hesitation to his doom. Nor is this
heroic spirit yet extinct. When, in our own time, a new and terrible pestilence passed round the globe, when, in some
great cities, fear had dissolved all the ties which hold society together, when the secular clergy had deserted their
flocks, when medical succour was not to be purchased by gold, when the strongest natural affections had yielded to the
love of life, even then the Jesuit was found by the pallet which bishop and curate, physician and nurse, father and
mother, had deserted, bending over infected lips to catch the faint accents of confession, and holding up to the last,
before the expiring penitent, the image of the expiring Redeemer.

But with the admirable energy, disinterestedness, and self-devotion which were characteristic of the Society, great
vices were mingled. It was alleged, and not without foundation, that the ardent public spirit which made the Jesuit
regardless of his ease, of his liberty, and of his life, made him also regardless of truth and of mercy; that no means
which could promote the interest of his religion seemed to him unlawful, and that by the interest of his religion he
too often meant the interest of his Society. It was alleged that, in the most atrocious plots recorded in history, his
agency could be distinctly traced; that, constant only in attachment to the fraternity to which he belonged, he was in
some countries the most dangerous enemy of freedom, and in others the most dangerous enemy of order. The mighty
victories which he boasted that he had achieved in the cause of the Church were, in the judgment of many illustrious
members of that Church, rather apparent than real. He had indeed laboured with a wonderful show of success to reduce
the world under her laws; but he had done so by relaxing her laws to suit the temper of the world. Instead of toiling
to elevate human nature to the noble standard fixed by divine precept and example, he had lowered the standard till it
was beneath the average level of human nature. He gloried in multitudes of converts who had been baptized in the remote
regions of the East: but it was reported that from some of those converts the facts on which the whole theology of the
Gospel depends had been cunningly concealed, and that others were permitted to avoid persecution by bowing down before
the images of false gods, while internally repeating Paters and Ayes. Nor was it only in heathen countries that such
arts were said to be practised. It was not strange that people of alt ranks, and especially of the highest ranks,
crowded to the confessionals in the Jesuit temples; for from those confessionals none went discontented away. There the
priest was all things to all men. He showed just so much rigour as might not drive those who knelt at his spiritual
tribunal to the Dominican or the Franciscan church. If he had to deal with a mind truly devout, he spoke in the saintly
tones of the primitive fathers, but with that very large part of mankind who have religion enough to make them uneasy
when they do wrong, and not religion enough to keep them from doing wrong, he followed a very different system. Since
he could not reclaim them from guilt, it was his business to save them from remorse. He had at his command an immense
dispensary of anodynes for wounded consciences. In the books of casuistry which had been written by his brethren, and
printed with the approbation of his superiors, were to be found doctrines consolatory to transgressors of every class.
There the bankrupt was taught how he might, without sin, secrete his goods from his creditors. The servant was taught
how he might, without sin, run off with his master’s plate. The pandar was assured that a Christian man might
innocently earn his living by carrying letters and messages between married women and their gallants. The high spirited
and punctilious gentlemen of France were gratified by a decision in favour of duelling. The Italians, accustomed to
darker and baser modes of vengeance, were glad to learn that they might, without any crime, shoot at their enemies from
behind hedges. To deceit was given a license sufficient to destroy the whole value of human contracts and of human
testimony. In truth, if society continued to hold together, if life and property enjoyed any security, it was because
common sense and common humanity restrained men from doing what the Society of Jesus assured them that they might with
a safe conscience do.

So strangely were good and evil intermixed in the character of these celebrated brethren; and the intermixture was
the secret of their gigantic power. That power could never have belonged to mere hypocrites. It could never have
belonged to rigid moralists. It was to be attained only by men sincerely enthusiastic in the pursuit of a great end,
and at the same time unscrupulous as to the choice of means.

From the first the Jesuits had been bound by a peculiar allegiance to the Pope. Their mission had been not less to
quell all mutiny within the Church than to repel the hostility of her avowed enemies. Their doctrine was in the highest
degree what has been called on our side of the Alps Ultramontane, and differed almost as much from the doctrine of
Bossuet as from that of Luther. They condemned the Gallican liberties, the claim of oecumenical councils to control the
Holy See, and the claim of Bishops to an independent commission from heaven. Lainez, in the name of the whole
fraternity, proclaimed at Trent, amidst the applause of the creatures of Pius the Fourth, and the murmurs of French and
Spanish prelates, that the government of the faithful had been committed by Christ to the Pope alone, that in the Pope
alone all sacerdotal authority was concentrated, and that through the Pope alone priests and bishops derived whatever
divine authority they possessed. 56 During many years the
union between the Supreme Pontiffs and the Order had continued unbroken. Had that union been still unbroken when James
the Second ascended the English throne, had the influence of the Jesuits as well as the influence of the Pope been
exerted in favour of a moderate and constitutional policy, it is probable that the great revolution which in a short
time changed the whole state of European affairs would never have taken place. But, even before the middle of the
seventeenth century, the Society, proud of its services and confident in its strength, had become impatient of the
yoke. A generation of Jesuits sprang up, who looked for protection and guidance rather to the court of France than to
the court of Rome; and this disposition was not a little strengthened when Innocent the Eleventh was raised to the
papal throne.

The Jesuits were, at that time, engaged in a war to the death against an enemy whom they had at first disdained, but
whom they had at length been forced to regard with respect and fear. Just when their prosperity was at the height, they
were braved by a handful of opponents, who had indeed no influence with the rulers of this world, but who were strong
in religious faith and intellectual energy. Then followed a long, a strange, a glorious conflict of genius against
power. The Jesuit called cabinets, tribunals, universities to his aid; and they responded to the call. Port Royal
appealed, not in vain, to the hearts and to the understandings of millions. The dictators of Christendom found
themselves, on a sudden, in the position of culprits. They were arraigned on the charge of having systematically
debased the standard of evangelical morality, for the purpose of increasing their own influence; and the charge was
enforced in a manner which at once arrested the attention of the whole world: for the chief accuser was Blaise Pascal.
His intellectual powers were such as have rarely been bestowed on any of the children of men; and the vehemence of the
zeal which animated him was but too well proved by the cruel penances and vigils under which his macerated frame sank
into an early grave. His spirit was the spirit of Saint Bernard: but the delicacy of his wit, the purity, the energy,
the simplicity of his rhetoric, had never been equalled, except by the great masters of Attic eloquence. All Europe
read and admired, laughed and wept. The Jesuits attempted to reply: but their feeble answers were received by the
public with shouts of mockery. They wanted, it is true, no talent or accomplishment into which men can be drilled by
elaborate discipline; but such discipline, though it may bring out the powers of ordinary minds, has a tendency to
suffocate, rather than to develop, original genius. It was universally acknowledged that, in the literary contest, the
Jansenists were completely victorious. To the Jesuits nothing was left but to oppress the sect which they could not
confute. Lewis the Fourteenth was now their chief support. His conscience had, from boyhood, been in their keeping; and
he had learned from them to abhor Jansenism quite as much as he abhorred Protestantism, and very much more than he
abhorred Atheism. Innocent the Eleventh, on the other hand, leaned to the Jansenist opinions. The consequence was, that
the Society found itself in a situation never contemplated by its founder. The Jesuits were estranged from the Supreme
Pontiff; and they were closely allied with a prince who proclaimed himself the champion of the Gallican liberties and
the enemy of Ultramontane pretensions. Thus the Order became in England an instrument of the designs of Lewis, and
laboured, with a success which the Roman Catholics afterwards long and bitterly deplored, to widen the breach between
the King and the Parliament, to thwart the Nuncio, to undermine the power of the Lord Treasurer, and to support the
most desperate schemes of Tyrconnel.

Thus on one side were the Hydes and the whole body of Tory churchmen, Powis and all the most respectable noblemen
and gentlemen of the King’s own faith, the States General, the House of Austria, and the Pope. On the other side were a
few Roman Catholic adventurers, of broken fortune and tainted reputation, backed by France and by the Jesuits.

The chief representative of the Jesuits at Whitehall was an English brother of the Order, who had, during some time,
acted as Viceprovincial, who had been long regarded by James with peculiar favour, and who had lately been made Clerk
of the Closet. This man, named Edward Petre, was descended from an honourable family. His manners were courtly: his
speech was flowing and plausible; but he was weak and vain, covetous and ambitious. Of all the evil counsellors who had
access to the royal ear, he bore, perhaps, the largest part in the ruin of the House of Stuart.

The obstinate and imperious nature of the King gave great advantages to those who advised him to be firm, to yield
nothing, and to make himself feared. One state maxim had taken possession of his small understanding, and was not to be
dislodged by reason. To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so
called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors.
He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he
asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all
objections.57 “I will make no concession,” he often repeated;
“my father made concessions, and he was beheaded.” 58 If it
were true that concession had been fatal to Charles the First, a man of sense would have known that a single experiment
is not sufficient to establish a general rule even in sciences much less complicated than the science of government;
that, since the beginning of the world, no two political experiments were ever made of which all the conditions were
exactly alike; and that the only way to learn civil prudence from history is to examine and compare an immense number
of cases. But, if the single instance on which the King relied proved anything, it proved that he was in the wrong.
There can be little doubt that, if Charles had frankly made to the Short Parliament, which met in the spring of 1640,
but one half of the concessions which he made, a few months later, to the Long Parliament, he would have lived and died
a powerful King. On the other hand, there can be no doubt whatever that, if he had refused to make any concession to
the Long Parliament, and had resorted to arms in defence of the ship money and of the Star Chamber, he would have seen,
in the hostile ranks, Hyde and Falkland side by side with Hollis and Hampden. But, in truth, he would not have been
able to resort to arms; for nor twenty Cavaliers would have joined his standard. It was to his large concessions alone
that he owed the support of that great body of noblemen and gentlemen who fought so long and so gallantly in his cause.
But it would have been useless to represent these things to James.

Another fatal delusion had taken possession of his mind, and was never dispelled till it had ruined him. He firmly
believed that, do what he might, the members of the Church of England would act up to their principles. It had, he
knew, been proclaimed from ten thousand pulpits, it had been solemnly declared by the University of Oxford, that even
tyranny as frightful as that of the most depraved of the Caesars did not justify subjects in resisting the royal
authority; and hence he was weak enough to conclude that the whole body of Tory gentlemen and clergymen would let him
plunder, oppress, and insult them without lifting an arm against him. It seems strange that any man should have passed
his fiftieth year without discovering that people sometimes do what they think wrong: and James had only to look into
his own heart for abundant proof that even a strong sense of religious duty will not always prevent frail human beings
from indulging their passions in defiance of divine laws, and at the risk of awful penalties. He must have been
conscious that, though he thought adultery sinful, he was an adulterer: but nothing could convince him that any man who
professed to think rebellion sinful would ever, in any extremity, be a rebel. The Church of England was, in his view, a
passive victim, which he might, without danger, outrage and torture at his pleasure; nor did he ever see his error till
the Universities were preparing to coin their plate for the purpose of supplying the military chest of his enemies, and
till a Bishop, long renowned for loyalty, had thrown aside his cassock, girt on a sword, and taken the command of a
regiment of insurgents.

In these fatal follies the King was artfully encouraged by a minister who had been an Exclusionist, and who still
called himself a Protestant, the Earl of Sunderland. The motives and conduct of this unprincipled politician have often
been misrepresented. He was, in his own lifetime, accused by the Jacobites of having, even before the beginning of the
reign of James, determined to bring about a revolution in favour of the Prince of Orange, and of having, with that
view, recommended a succession of outrages on the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the realm. This idle story
has been repeated down to our own days by ignorant writers. But no well informed historian, whatever might be his
prejudices, has condescended to adopt it: for it rests on no evidence whatever; and scarcely any evidence would
convince reasonable men that Sunderland deliberately incurred guilt and infamy in order to bring about a change by
which it was clear that he could not possibly be a gainer, and by which, in fact, he lost immense wealth and influence.
Nor is there the smallest reason for resorting to so strange a hypothesis. For the truth lies on the surface. Crooked
as this man’s course was, the law which determined it was simple. His conduct is to be ascribed to the alternate
influence of cupidity and fear on a mind highly susceptible of both those passions, and quicksighted rather than
farsighted. He wanted more power and more money. More power he could obtain only at Rochester’s expense; and the
obvious way to obtain power at Rochester’s expense was to encourage the dislike which the King felt for Rochester’s
moderate counsels. Money could be most easily and most largely obtained from the court of Versailles; and Sunderland
was eager to sell himself to that court. He had no jovial generous vices. He cared little for wine or for beauty: but
he desired riches with an ungovernable and insatiable desire. The passion for play raged in him without measure, and
had not been tamed by ruinous losses. His hereditary fortune was ample. He had long filled lucrative posts, and had
neglected no art which could make them more lucrative: but his ill luck at the hazard table was such that his estates
were daily becoming more and more encumbered. In the hope of extricating himself from his embarrassments, he betrayed
to Barillon all the schemes adverse to France which had been meditated in the English cabinet, and hinted that a
Secretary of State could in such times render services for which it might be wise in Lewis to pay largely. The
Ambassador told his master that six thousand guineas was the smallest gratification that could be offered to so
important a minister. Lewis consented to go as high as twenty-five thousand crowns, equivalent to about five thousand
six hundred pounds sterling. It was agreed that Sunderland should receive this sum yearly, and that he should, in
return, exert all his influence to prevent the reassembling of the Parliament. 59 He joined himself therefore to the Jesuitical cabal, and made so dexterous an use of the
influence of that cabal that he was appointed to succeed Halifax in the high dignity of Lord President without being
required to resign the far more active and lucrative post of Secretary. 60 He felt, however, that he could never hope to obtain paramount influence in the court while he
was supposed to belong to the Established Church. All religions were the same to him. In private circles, indeed, he
was in the habit of talking with profane contempt of the most sacred things. He therefore determined to let the King
have the delight and glory of effecting a conversion. Some management, however, was necessary. No man is utterly
without regard for the opinion of his fellow creatures; and even Sunderland, though not very sensible to shame,
flinched from the infamy of public apostasy. He played his part with rare adroitness. To the world he showed himself as
a Protestant. In the royal closet he assumed the character of an earnest inquirer after truth, who was almost persuaded
to declare himself a Roman Catholic, and who, while waiting for fuller illumination, was disposed to render every
service in his power to the professors of the old faith. James, who was never very discerning, and who in religious
matters was absolutely blind, suffered himself, notwithstanding all that he had seen of human knavery, of the knavery
of courtiers as a class, and of the knavery of Sunderland in particular, to be duped into the belief that divine grace
had touched the most false and callous of human hearts. During many months the wily minister continued to be regarded
at court as a promising catechumen, without exhibiting himself to the public in the character of a renegade. 61

He early suggested to the King the expediency of appointing a secret committee of Roman Catholics to advise on all
matters affecting the interests of their religion. This committee met sometimes at Chiffinch’s lodgings, and sometimes
at the official apartments of Sunderland, who, though still nominally a Protestant, was admitted to all its
deliberations, and soon obtained a decided ascendency over the other members. Every Friday the Jesuitical cabal dined
with the Secretary. The conversation at table was free; and the weaknesses of the prince whom the confederates hoped to
manage were not spared. To Petre Sunderland promised a Cardinal’s hat; to Castelmaine a splendid embassy to Rome; to
Dover a lucrative command in the Guards; and to Tyrconnel high employment in Ireland. Thus hound together by the
strongest ties of interest, these men addressed themselves to the task of subverting the Treasurer’s power. 62

There were two Protestant members of the cabinet who took no decided part in the struggle. Jeffreys was at this time
tortured by a cruel internal malady which had been aggravated by intemperance. At a dinner which a wealthy Alderman
gave to some of the leading members of the government, the Lord Treasurer and the Lord Chancellor were so drunk that
they stripped themselves almost stark naked, and were with difficulty prevented from climbing up a signpost to drink
His Majesty’s health. The pious Treasurer escaped with nothing but the scandal of the debauch: but the Chancellor
brought on a violent fit of his complaint. His life was for some time thought to be in serious danger. James expressed
great uneasiness at the thought of losing a minister who suited him so well, and said, with some truth, that the loss
of such a man could not be easily repaired. Jeffreys, when he became convalescent, promised his support to both the
contending parties, and waited to see which of them would prove victorious. Some curious proofs of his duplicity are
still extant. It has been already said that the two French agents who were then resident in London had divided the
English court between them. Bonrepaux was constantly with Rochester; and Barillon lived with Sunderland. Lewis was
informed in the same week by Bonrepaux that the Chancellor was entirely with the Treasurer, and by Barillon that the
Chancellor was in league with the Secretary. 63

Godolphin, cautious and taciturn, did his best to preserve neutrality. His opinions and wishes were undoubtedly with
Rochester; but his office made it necessary for him to be in constant attendance on the Queen; and he was naturally
unwilling to be on bad terms with her. There is indeed reason to believe that he regarded her with an attachment more
romantic than often finds place in the hearts of veteran statesmen; and circumstances, which it is now necessary to
relate, had thrown her entirely into the hands of the Jesuitical cabal. 64

The King, stern as was his temper and grave as was his deportment, was scarcely less under the influence of female
attractions than his more lively and amiable brother had been. The beauty, indeed, which distinguished the favourite
ladies of Charles was not necessary to James. Barbara Palmer, Eleanor Gwynn, and Louisa de Querouaille were among the
finest women of their time. James, when young, had surrendered his liberty, descended below his rank, and incurred the
displeasure of his family for the coarse features of Anne Hyde. He had soon, to the great diversion of the whole court,
been drawn away from his plain consort by a plainer mistress, Arabella Churchill. His second wife, though twenty years
younger than himself, and of no unpleasing face or figure, had frequent reason to complain of his inconstancy. But of
all his illicit attachments the strongest was that which bound him to Catharine Sedley.

This woman was the daughter of Sir Charles Sedley, one of the most brilliant and profligate wits of the Restoration.
The licentiousness of his writings is not redeemed by much grace or vivacity; but the charms of his conversation were
acknowledged even by sober men who had no esteem for his character. To sit near him at the theatre, and to hear his
criticisms on a new play, was regarded as a privilege. 65
Dryden had done him the honour to make him a principal interlocutor in the Dialogue on Dramatic Poesy. The morals of
Sedley were such as, even in that age, gave great scandal. He on one occasion, after a wild revel, exhibited himself
without a shred of clothing in the balcony of a tavern near Covent Garden, and harangued the people who were passing in
language so indecent and profane that he was driven in by a shower of brickbats, was prosecuted for a misdemeanour, was
sentenced to a heavy fine, and was reprimanded by the Court of King’s Bench in the most cutting terms. 66 His daughter had inherited his abilities and his impudence. Personal
charms she had none, with the exception of two brilliant eyes, the lustre of which, to men of delicate taste, seemed
fierce and unfeminine. Her form was lean, her countenance haggard. Charles, though he liked her conversation, laughed
at her ugliness, and said that the priests must have recommended her to his brother by way of penance. She well knew
that she was not handsome, and jested freely on her own homeliness. Yet, with strange inconsistency, she loved to adorn
herself magnificently, and drew on herself much keen ridicule by appearing in the theatre and the ring plastered,
painted, clad in Brussels lace, glittering with diamonds, and affecting all the graces of eighteen. 67

The nature of her influence over James is not easily to be explained. He was no longer young. He was a religious
man; at least he was willing to make for his religion exertions and sacrifices from which the great majority of those
who are called religious men would shrink. It seems strange that any attractions should have drawn him into a course of
life which he must have regarded as highly criminal; and in this case none could understand where the attraction lay.
Catharine herself was astonished by the violence of his passion. “It cannot be my beauty,” she said; “for he must see
that I have none; and it cannot be my wit, for he has not enough to know that I have any.”

At the moment of the King’s accession a sense of the new responsibility which lay on him made his mind for a time
peculiarly open to religious impressions. He formed and announced many good resolutions, spoke in public with great
severity of the impious and licentious manners of the age, and in private assured his Queen and his confessor that he
would see Catharine Sedley no more. He wrote to his mistress entreating her to quit the apartments which she occupied
at Whitehall, and to go to a house in Saint James’s Square which had been splendidly furnished for her at his expense.
He at the same time promised to allow her a large pension from his privy purse. Catharine, clever, strongminded,
intrepid, and conscious of her power, refused to stir. In a few months it began to be whispered that the services of
Chiffinch were again employed, and that the mistress frequently passed and repassed through that private door through
which Father Huddleston had borne the host to the bedside of Charles. The King’s Protestant ministers had, it seems,
conceived a hope that their master’s infatuation for this woman might cure him of the more pernicious infatuation which
impelled him to attack their religion. She had all the talents which could qualify her to play on his feelings, to make
game of his scruples, to set before him in a strong light the difficulties and dangers into which he was running
headlong. Rochester, the champion of the Church, exerted himself to strengthen her influence. Ormond, who is popularly
regarded as the personification of all that is pure and highminded in the English Cavalier, encouraged the design. Even
Lady Rochester was not ashamed to cooperate, and that in the very worst way. Her office was to direct the jealousy of
the injured wife towards a young lady who was perfectly innocent. The whole court took notice of the coldness and
rudeness with which the Queen treated the poor girl on whom suspicion had been thrown: but the cause of Her Majesty’s
ill humour was a mystery. For a time the intrigue went on prosperously and secretly. Catharine often told the King
plainly what the Protestant Lords of the Council only dared to hint in the most delicate phrases. His crown, she said,
was at stake: the old dotard Arundell and the blustering Tyrconnel would lead him to his ruin. It is possible that her
caresses might have done what the united exhortations of the Lords and the Commons, of the House of Austria and the
Holy See, had failed to do, but for a strange mishap which changed the whole face of affairs. James, in a fit of
fondness, determined to make his mistress Countess of Dorchester in her own right. Catharine saw all the peril of such
a step, and declined the invidious honour. Her lover was obstinate, and himself forced the patent into her hands. She
at last accepted it on one condition, which shows her confidence in her own power and in his weakness. She made him
give her a solemn promise, not that he would never quit her, but that, if he did so, he would himself announce his
resolution to her, and grant her one parting interview.

As soon as the news of her elevation got abroad, the whole palace was in an uproar. The warm blood of Italy boiled
in the veins of the Queen. Proud of her youth and of her charms, of her high rank and of her stainless chastity, she
could not without agonies of grief and rage see herself deserted and insulted for such a rival. Rochester, perhaps
remembering how patiently, after a short struggle, Catharine of Braganza had consented to treat the mistresses of
Charles with politeness, had expected that, after a little complaining and pouting, Mary of Modena would be equally
submissive. It was not so. She did not even attempt to conceal from the eyes of the world the violence of her emotions.
Day after day the courtiers who came to see her dine observed that the dishes were removed untasted from the table. She
suffered the tears to stream down her cheeks unconcealed in the presence of the whole circle of ministers and envoys.
To the King she spoke with wild vehemence. “Let me go,” she cried. “You have made your woman a Countess: make her a
Queen. Put my crown on her head. Only let me hide myself in some convent, where I may never see her more.” Then, more
soberly, she asked him how he reconciled his conduct to his religious professions. “You are ready,” she said, “to put
your kingdom to hazard for the sake of your soul; and yet you are throwing away your soul for the sake of that
creature.” Father Petre, on bended knees, seconded these remonstrances. It was his duty to do so; and his duty was not
the less strenuously performed because it coincided with his interest. The King went on for a time sinning and
repenting. In his hours of remorse his penances were severe. Mary treasured up to the end of her life, and at her death
bequeathed to the convent of Chaillot, the scourge with which he had vigorously avenged her wrongs upon his own
shoulders. Nothing but Catharine’s absence could put an end to this struggle between an ignoble love and an ignoble
superstition. James wrote, imploring and commanding her to depart. He owned that he had promised to bid her farewell in
person. “But I know too well,” he added, “the power which you have over me. I have not strength of mind enough to keep
my resolution if I see you.” He offered her a yacht to convey her with all dignity and comfort to Flanders, and
threatened that if she did not go quietly she should be sent away by force. She at one time worked on his feelings by
pretending to be ill. Then she assumed the airs of a martyr, and impudently proclaimed herself a sufferer for the
Protestant religion. Then again she adopted the style of John Hampden. She defied the King to remove her. She would try
the right with him. While the Great Charter and the Habeas Corpus Act were the law of the land, she would live where
she pleased. “And Flanders,” she cried; “never! I have learned one thing from my friend the Duchess of Mazarin; and
that is never to trust myself in a country where there are convents.” At length she selected Ireland as the place of
her exile, probably because the brother of her patron Rochester was viceroy there. After many delays she departed,
leaving the victory to the Queen. 68

The history of this extraordinary intrigue would be imperfect, if it were not added that there is still extant a
religious meditation, written by the Treasurer, with his own hand, on the very same day on which the intelligence of
his attempt to govern his master by means of a concubine was despatched by Bonrepaux to Versailles. No composition of
Ken or Leighton breathes a spirit of more fervent and exalted piety than this effusion. Hypocrisy cannot be suspected:
for the paper was evidently meant only for the writer’s own eye, and was not published till he had been more than a
century in his grave. So much is history stranger than fiction; and so true is it that nature has caprices which art
dares not imitate. A dramatist would scarcely venture to bring on the stage a grave prince, in the decline of life,
ready to sacrifice his crown in order to serve the interests of his religion, indefatigable in making proselytes, and
yet deserting and insulting a wife who had youth and beauty for the sake of a profligate paramour who had neither.
Still less, if possible, would a dramatist venture to introduce a statesman stooping to the wicked and shameful part of
a procurer, and calling in his wife to aid him in that dishonourable office, yet, in his moments of leisure, retiring
to his closet, and there secretly pouring out his soul to his God in penitent tears and devout ejaculations. 69

The Treasurer soon found that, in using scandalous means for the purpose of obtaining a laudable end, he had
committed, not only a crime, but a folly. The Queen was now his enemy. She affected, indeed, to listen with civility
while the Hydes excused their recent conduct as well as they could; and she occasionally pretended to use her influence
in their favour: but she must have been more or less than woman if she had really forgiven the conspiracy which had
been formed against her dignity and her domestic happiness by the family of her husband’s first wife. The Jesuits
strongly represented to the King the danger which he had so narrowly escaped. His reputation, they said, his peace, his
soul, had been put in peril by the machinations of his prime minister. The Nuncio, who would gladly have counteracted
the influence of the violent party, and cooperated with the moderate members of the cabinet, could not honestly or
decently separate himself on this occasion from Father Petre. James himself, when parted by the sea from the charms
which had so strongly fascinated him, could not but regard with resentment and contempt those who had sought to govern
him by means of his vices. What had passed must have had the effect of raising his own Church in his esteem, and of
lowering the Church of England. The Jesuits, whom it was the fashion to represent as the most unsafe of spiritual
guides, as sophists who refined away the whole system of evangelical morality, as sycophants who owed their influence
chiefly to the indulgence with which they treated the sins of the great, had reclaimed him from a life of guilt by
rebukes as sharp and bold as those which David had heard from Nathan and Herod from the Baptist. On the other hand,
zealous Protestants, whose favourite theme was the laxity of Popish casuists and the wickedness of doing evil that good
might come, had attempted to obtain advantages for their own Church in a way which all Christians regarded as highly
criminal. The victory of the cabal of evil counsellors was therefore complete. The King looked coldly on Rochester. The
courtiers and foreign ministers soon perceived that the Lord Treasurer was prime minister only in name. He continued to
offer his advice daily, and had the mortification to find it daily rejected. Yet he could not prevail on himself to
relinquish the outward show of power and the emoluments which he directly and indirectly derived from his great place.
He did his best, therefore, to conceal his vexations from the public eye. But his violent passions and his intemperate
habits disqualified him for the part of a dissembler. His gloomy looks, when he came out of the council chamber, showed
how little he was pleased with what had passed at the board; and, when the bottle had gone round freely, words escaped
him which betrayed his uneasiness. 70

He might, indeed, well be uneasy. Indiscreet and unpopular measures followed each other in rapid succession. All
thought of returning to the policy of the Triple Alliance was abandoned. The King explicitly avowed to the ministers of
those continental powers with which he had lately intended to ally himself, that all his views had undergone a change,
and that England was still to be, as she had been under his grandfather, his father, and his brother, of no account in
Europe. “I am in no condition,” he said to the Spanish Ambassador, “to trouble myself about what passes abroad. It is
my resolution to let foreign affairs take their course, to establish my authority at home, and to do something for my
religion.” A few days later he announced the same intentions to the States General. 71 From that time to the close of his ignominious reign, he made no serious
effort to escape from vassalage, though, to the last, he could never hear, without transports of rage, that men called
him a vassal.

The two events which proved to the public that Sunderland and Sunderland’s party were victorious were the
prorogation of the Parliament from February to May, and the departure of Castelmaine for Rome with the appointments of
an Ambassador of the highest rank. 72

Hitherto all the business of the English government at the papal court had been transacted by John Caryl. This
gentleman was known to his contemporaries as a man of fortune and fashion, and as the author of two successful plays, a
tragedy in rhyme which had been made popular by the action and recitation of Betterton, and a comedy which owes all its
value to scenes borrowed from Moliere. These pieces have long been forgotten; but what Caryl could not do for himself
has been done for him by a more powerful genius. Half a line in the Rape of the Lock has made his name immortal.

Caryl, who was, like all the other respectable Roman Catholics, an enemy to violent courses, had acquitted himself
of his delicate errand at Rome with good sense and good feeling. The business confided to him was well done; but he
assumed no public character, and carefully avoided all display. His mission, therefore, put the government to scarcely
any charge, and excited scarcely any murmurs. His place was now most unwisely supplied by a costly and ostentatious
embassy, offensive in the highest degree to the people of England, and by no means welcome to the court of Rome.
Castelmaine had it in charge to demand a Cardinal’s hat for his confederate Petre.

About the same time the King began to show, in an unequivocal manner, the feeling which he really entertained
towards the banished Huguenots. While he had still hoped to cajole his Parliament into submission and to become the
head of an European coalition against France, he had affected to blame the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and to
pity the unhappy men whom persecution had driven from their country. He had caused it to be announced that, at every
church in the kingdom, a collection would be made under his sanction for their benefit. A proclamation on this subject
had been drawn up in terms which might have wounded the pride of a sovereign less sensitive and vainglorious than
Lewis. But all was now changed. The principles of the treaty of Dover were again the principles of the foreign policy
of England. Ample apologies were therefore made for the discourtesy with which the English government had acted towards
France in showing favour to exiled Frenchmen. The proclamation which had displeased Lewis was recalled. 73 The Huguenot ministers were admonished to speak with reverence of their
oppressor in their public discourses, as they would answer it at their peril. James not only ceased to express
commiseration for the sufferers, but declared that he believed them to harbour the worst designs, and owned that he had
been guilty of an error in countenancing them. One of the most eminent of the refugees, John Claude, had published on
the Continent a small volume in which he described with great force the sufferings of his brethren. Barillon demanded
that some opprobrious mark should be put on his book. James complied, and in full council declared it to be his
pleasure that Claude’s libel should be burned by the hangman before the Royal Exchange. Even Jeffreys was startled, and
ventured to represent that such a proceeding was without example, that the book was written in a foreign tongue, that
it had been printed at a foreign press, that it related entirely to transactions which had taken place in a foreign
country, and that no English government had ever animadverted on such works. James would not suffer the question to be
discussed. “My resolution,” he said, “is taken. It has become the fashion to treat Kings disrespectfully; and they must
stand by each other. One King should always take another’s part: and I have particular reasons for showing this respect
to the King of France.” There was silence at the board. The order was forthwith issued; and Claude’s pamphlet was
committed to the flames, not without the deep murmurs of many who had always been reputed steady loyalists. 74

The promised collection was long put off under various pretexts. The King would gladly have broken his word; but it
was pledged so solemnly that he could not for very shame retract. 75 Nothing, however, which could cool the zeal of congregations was omitted. It had been expected
that, according to the practice usual on such occasions, the people would be exhorted to liberality from the pulpits.
But James was determined not to tolerate declamations against his religion and his ally. The Archbishop of Canterbury
was therefore commanded to inform the clergy that they must merely read the brief, and must not presume to preach on
the sufferings of the French Protestants. 76 Nevertheless the
contributions were so large that, after all deductions, the sum of forty thousand pounds was paid into the Chamber of
London. Perhaps none of the munificent subscriptions of our own age has borne so great a proportion to the means of the
nation. 77

The King was bitterly mortified by the large amount of the collection which had been made in obedience to his own
call. He knew, he said, what all this liberality meant. It was mere Whiggish spite to himself and his religion.
78 He had already resolved that the money should be of no use
to those whom the donors wished to benefit. He had been, during some weeks, in close communication with the French
embassy on this subject, and had, with the approbation of the court of Versailles, determined on a course which it is
not very easy to reconcile with those principles of toleration to which he afterwards pretended to be attached. The
refugees were zealous for the Calvinistic discipline and worship. James therefore gave orders that none should receive
a crust of bread or a basket of coals who did not first take the sacrament according to the Anglican ritual. 79 It is strange that this inhospitable rule should have been devised
by a prince who affected to consider the Test Act as an outrage on the rights of conscience: for, however unjustifiable
it may be to establish a sacramental test for the purpose of ascertaining whether men are fit for civil and military
office, it is surely much more unjustifiable to establish a sacramental test for the purpose of ascertaining whether,
in their extreme distress, they are fit objects of charity. Nor had James the plea which may be urged in extenuation of
the guilt of almost all other persecutors: for the religion which he commanded the refugees to profess, on pain of
being left to starve, was not his own religion. His conduct towards them was therefore less excusable than that of
Lewis: for Lewis oppressed them in the hope of bringing them over from a damnable heresy to the true Church: James
oppressed them only for the purpose of forcing them to apostatize from one damnable heresy to another.

Several Commissioners, of whom the Chancellor was one, had been appointed to dispense the public alms. When they met
for the first time, Jeffreys announced the royal pleasure. The refugees, he said, were too generally enemies of
monarchy and episcopacy. If they wished for relief, they must become members of the Church of England, and must take
the sacrament from the hands of his chaplain. Many exiles, who had come full of gratitude and hope to apply for
succour, heard their sentence, and went brokenhearted away. 80

May was now approaching; and that month had been fixed for the meeting of the Houses: but they were again prorogued
to November. 81 It was not strange that the King did not wish
to meet them: for he had determined to adopt a policy which he knew to be, in the highest degree, odious to them. From
his predecessors he had inherited two prerogatives, of which the limits had never been defined with strict accuracy,
and which, if exerted without any limit, would of themselves have sufficed to overturn the whole polity of the State
and of the Church. These were the dispensing power and the ecclesiastical supremacy. By means of the dispensing power
the King purposed to admit Roman Catholics, not merely to civil and military, but to spiritual, offices. By means of
the ecclesiastical supremacy he hoped to make the Anglican clergy his instruments for the destruction of their own
religion.

This scheme developed itself by degrees. It was not thought safe to begin by granting to the whole Roman Catholic
body a dispensation from all statutes imposing penalties and tests. For nothing was more fully established than that
such a dispensation was illegal. The Cabal had, in 1672, put forth a general Declaration of Indulgence. The Commons, as
soon as they met, had protested against it. Charles the Second had ordered it to be cancelled in his presence, and had,
both by his own mouth and by a written message, assured the Houses that the step which had caused so much complaint
should never be drawn into precedent. It would have been difficult to find in all the Inns of Court a barrister of
reputation to argue in defence of a prerogative which the Sovereign, seated on his throne in full Parliament, had
solemnly renounced a few years before. But it was not quite so clear that the King might not, on special grounds, grant
exemptions to individuals by name. The first object of James, therefore, was to obtain from the courts of common law an
acknowledgment that, to this extent at least, he possessed the dispensing power.

But, though his pretensions were moderate when compared with those which he put forth a few months later, he soon
found that he had against him almost the whole sense of Westminster Hall. Four of the Judges gave him to understand
that they could not, on this occasion, serve his purpose; and it is remarkable that all the four were violent Tories,
and that among them were men who had accompanied Jeffreys on the Bloody Circuit, and who had consented to the death of
Cornish and of Elizabeth Gaunt. Jones, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, a man who had never before shrunk from
any drudgery, however cruel or servile, now held in the royal closet language which might have become the lips of the
purest magistrates in our history. He was plainly told that he must either give up his opinion or his place. “For my
place,” he answered, “I care little. I am old and worn out in the service of the crown; but I am mortified to find that
your Majesty thinks me capable of giving a judgment which none but an ignorant or a dishonest man could give.” “I am
determined,” said the King, “to have twelve Judges who will be all of my mind as to this matter.” “Your Majesty,”
answered Jones, “may find twelve Judges of your mind, but hardly twelve lawyers.” 82 He was dismissed together with Montague, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, and
two puisne Judges, Neville and Charlton. One of the new Judges was Christopher Milton, younger brother of the great
poet. Of Christopher little is known except that, in the time of the civil war, he had been a Royalist, and that he
now, in his old age, leaned towards Popery. It does not appear that he was ever formally reconciled to the Church of
Rome: but he certainly had scruples about communicating with the Church of England, and had therefore a strong interest
in supporting the dispensing power. 83

The King found his counsel as refractory as his Judges. The first barrister who learned that he was expected to
defend the dispensing power was the Solicitor General, Heneage Finch. He peremptorily refused, and was turned out of
office on the following day. 84 The Attorney General, Sawyer,
was ordered to draw warrants authorising members of the Church of Rome to hold benefices belonging to the Church of
England. Sawyer had been deeply concerned in some of the harshest and most unjustifiable prosecutions of that age; and
the Whigs abhorred him as a man stained with the blood of Russell and Sidney: but on this occasion he showed no want of
honesty or of resolution. “Sir,” said he, “this is not merely to dispense with a statute; it is to annul the whole
statute law from the accession of Elizabeth to this day. I dare not do it; and I implore your Majesty to consider
whether such an attack upon the rights of the Church be in accordance with your late gracious promises.” 85 Sawyer would have been instantly dismissed as Finch had been, if the
government could have found a successor: but this was no easy matter. It was necessary for the protection of the rights
of the crown that one at least of the crown lawyers should be a man of learning, ability, and experience; and no such
man was willing to defend the dispensing power. The Attorney General was therefore permitted to retain his place during
some months. Thomas Powis, an insignificant man, who had no qualification for high employment except servility, was
appointed Solicitor.

The preliminary arrangements were now complete. There was a Solicitor General to argue for the dispensing power, and
twelve Judges to decide in favour of it. The question was therefore speedily brought to a hearing. Sir Edward Hales, a
gentleman of Kent, had been converted to Popery in days when it was not safe for any man of note openly to declare
himself a Papist. He had kept his secret, and, when questioned, had affirmed that he was a Protestant with a solemnity
which did little credit to his principles. When James had ascended the throne, disguise was no longer necessary. Sir
Edward publicly apostatized, and was rewarded with the command of a regiment of foot. He had held his commission more
than three months without taking the sacrament. He was therefore liable to a penalty of five hundred pounds, which an
informer might recover by action of debt. A menial servant was employed to bring a suit for this sum in the Court of
King’s Bench. Sir Edward did not dispute the facts alleged against him, but pleaded that he had letters patent
authorising him to hold his commission notwithstanding the Test Act. The plaintiff demurred, that is to say, admitted
Sir Edward’s plea to be true in fact, but denied that it was a sufficient answer. Thus was raised a simple issue of law
to be decided by the court. A barrister, who was notoriously a tool of the government, appeared for the mock plaintiff,
and made some feeble objections to the defendant’s plea. The new Solicitor General replied. The Attorney General took
no part in the proceedings. Judgment was given by the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Edward Herbert. He announced that he had
submitted the question to all the twelve Judges, and that, in the opinion of eleven of them, the King might lawfully
dispense with penal statutes in particular cases, and for special reasons of grave importance. The single dissentient,
Baron Street, was not removed from his place. He was a man of morals so bad that his own relations shrank from him, and
that the Prince of Orange, at the time of the Revolution, was advised not to see him. The character of Street makes it
impossible to believe that he would have been more scrupulous than his brethren. The character of James makes it
impossible to believe that a refractory Baron of the Exchequer would have been permitted to retain his post. There can
be no reasonable doubt that the dissenting Judge was, like the plaintiff and the plaintiff’s counsel, acting
collusively. It was important that there should be a great preponderance of authority in favour of the dispensing
power; yet it was important that the bench, which had been carefully packed for the occasion, should appear to be
independent. One Judge, therefore, the least respectable of the twelve, was permitted, or more probably commanded, to
give his voice against the prerogative. 86

The power which the courts of law had thus recognised was not suffered to lie idle. Within a month after the
decision of the King’s Bench had been pronounced, four Roman Catholic Lords were sworn of the Privy Council. Two of
these, Powis and Bellasyse, were of the moderate party, and probably took their seats with reluctance and with many sad
forebodings. The other two, Arundell and Dover, had no such misgivings.87

The dispensing power was, at the same time, employed for the purpose of enabling Roman Catholics to hold
ecclesiastical preferment. The new Solicitor readily drew the warrants in which Sawyer had refused to be concerned. One
of these warrants was in favour of a wretch named Edward Sclater, who had two livings which he was determined to keep
at all costs and through all changes. He administered the sacrament to his parishioners according to the rites of the
Church of England on Palm Sunday 1686. On Easter Sunday, only seven days later, he was at mass. The royal dispensation
authorised him to retain the emoluments of his benefices. To the remonstrances of the patrons from whom he had received
his preferment he replied in terms of insolent defiance, and, while the Roman Catholic cause prospered, put forth an
absurd treatise in defence of his apostasy. But, a very few weeks after the Revolution, a great congregation assembled
at Saint Mary’s in the Savoy, to see him received again into the bosom of the Church which he had deserted. He read his
recantation with tears flowing from his eyes, and pronounced a bitter invective against the Popish priests whose arts
had seduced him. 88

Scarcely less infamous was the conduct of Obadiah Walker. He was an aged priest of the Church of England, and was
well known in the University of Oxford as a man of learning. He had in the late reign been suspected of leaning towards
Popery, but had outwardly conformed to the established religion, and had at length been chosen Master of University
College. Soon after the accession of James, Walker determined to throw off the disguise which he had hitherto worn. He
absented himself from the public worship of the Church of England, and, with some fellows and undergraduates whom he
had perverted, heard mass daily in his own apartments. One of the first acts performed by the new Solicitor General was
to draw up an instrument which authorised Walker and his proselytes to hold their benefices, notwithstanding their
apostasy. Builders were immediately employed to turn two sets of rooms into an oratory. In a few weeks the Roman
Catholic rites were publicly performed in University College. A Jesuit was quartered there as chaplain. A press was
established there under royal license for the printing of Roman Catholic tracts. During two years and a half, Walker
continued to make war on Protestantism with all the rancour of a renegade: but when fortune turned he showed that he
wanted the courage of a martyr. He was brought to the bar of the House of Commons to answer for his conduct, and was
base enough to protest that he had never changed his religion, that he had never cordially approved of the doctrines of
the Church of Rome, and that he had never tried to bring any other person within the pale of that Church. It was hardly
worth while to violate the most sacred obligations of law and of plighted faith, for the purpose of making such
converts as these. 89

In a short time the King went a step further. Sclater and Walker had only been permitted to keep, after they became
Papists, the preferment which had been bestowed on them while they passed for Protestants. To confer a high office in
the Established Church on an avowed enemy of that Church was a far bolder violation of the laws and of the royal word.
But no course was too bold for James. The Deanery of Christchurch became vacant. That office was, both in dignity and
in emolument, one of the highest in the University of Oxford. The Dean was charged with the government of a greater
number of youths of high connections and of great hopes than could then be found in any other college. He was also the
head of a Cathedral. In both characters it was necessary that he should be a member of the Church of England.
Nevertheless John Massey, who was notoriously a member of the Church of Rome, and who had not one single
recommendation, except that he was a member of the Church of Rome, was appointed by virtue of the dispensing power; and
soon within the walls of Christchurch an altar was decked, at which mass was daily celebrated. 90 To the Nuncio the King said that what had been done at Oxford should very
soon be done at Cambridge. 91

Yet even this was a small evil compared with that which Protestants had good ground to apprehend. It seemed but too
probable that the whole government of the Anglican Church would shortly pass into the hands of her deadly enemies.
Three important sees had lately become vacant, that of York, that of Chester, and that of Oxford. The Bishopric of
Oxford was given to Samuel Parker, a parasite, whose religion, if he had any religion, was that of Rome, and who called
himself a Protestant only because he was encumbered with a wife. “I wished,” the King said to Adda, “to appoint an
avowed Catholic: but the time is not come. Parker is well inclined to us; he is one of us in feeling; and by degrees he
will bring round his clergy.” 92 The Bishopric of Chester,
vacant by the death of John Pearson, a great name both in philology and in divinity, was bestowed on Thomas Cartwright,
a still viler sycophant than Parker. The Archbishopric of York remained several years vacant. As no good reason could
be found for leaving so important a place unfilled, men suspected that the nomination was delayed only till the King
could venture to place the mitre on the head of an avowed Papist. It is indeed highly probable that the Church of
England was saved from this outrage by the good sense and good feeling of the Pope. Without a special dispensation from
Rome no Jesuit could be a Bishop; and Innocent could not be induced to grant such a dispensation to Petre.

James did not even make any secret of his intention to exert vigorously and systematically for the destruction of
the Established Church all the powers which he possessed as her head. He plainly said that, by a wise dispensation of
Providence, the Act of Supremacy would be the means of healing the fatal breach which it had caused. Henry and
Elizabeth had usurped a dominion which rightfully belonged to the Holy See. That dominion had, in the course of
succession, descended to an orthodox prince, and would be held by him in trust for the Holy See. He was authorised by
law to repress spiritual abuses; and the first spiritual abuse which he would repress should be the liberty which the
Anglican clergy assumed of defending their own religion and of attacking the doctrines of Rome. 93

But he was met by a great difficulty. The ecclesiastical supremacy which had devolved on him, was by no means the
same great and terrible prerogative which Elizabeth, James the First, and Charles the First had possessed. The
enactment which annexed to the crown an almost boundless visitatorial authority over the Church, though it had never
been formally repealed, had really lost a great part of its force. The substantive law remained; but it remained
unaccompanied by any formidable sanction or by any efficient system of procedure, and was therefore little more than a
dead letter.

The statute, which restored to Elizabeth the spiritual dominion assumed by her father and resigned by her sister,
contained a clause authorising the sovereign to constitute a tribunal which might investigate, reform, and punish all
ecclesiastical delinquencies. Under the authority given by this clause, the Court of High Commission was created. That
court was, during many years, the terror of Nonconformists, and, under the harsh administration of Laud, became an
object of fear and hatred even to those who most loved the Established Church. When the Long Parliament met, the High
Commission was generally regarded as the most grievous of the many grievances under which the nation laboured. An act
was therefore somewhat hastily passed, which not only took away from the Crown the power of appointing visitors to
superintend the Church, but abolished all ecclesiastical courts without distinction.

After the Restoration, the Cavaliers who filled the House of Commons, zealous as they were for the prerogative,
still remembered with bitterness the tyranny of the High Commission, and were by no means disposed to revive an
institution so odious. They at the same time thought, and not without reason, that the statute which had swept away all
the courts Christian of the realm, without providing any substitute, was open to grave objection. They accordingly
repealed that statute, with the exception of the part which related to the High Commission. Thus, the Archidiaconal
Courts, the Consistory Courts, the Court of Arches, the Court of Peculiars, and the Court of Delegates were revived:
but the enactment by which Elizabeth and her successors had been empowered to appoint Commissioners with visitatorial
authority over the Church was not only not revived, but was declared, with the utmost strength of language, to be
completely abrogated. It is therefore as clear as any point of constitutional law can be that James the Second was not
competent to appoint a Commission with power to visit and govern the Church of England. 94 But, if this were so, it was to little purpose that the Act of Supremacy, in
high sounding words, empowered him to amend what was amiss in that Church. Nothing but a machinery as stringent as that
which the Long Parliament had destroyed could force the Anglican clergy to become his agents for the destruction of the
Anglican doctrine and discipline. He therefore, as early as the month of April 1686, determined to create a new Court
of High Commission. This design was not immediately executed. It encountered the opposition of every minister who was
not devoted to France and to the Jesuits. It was regarded by lawyers as an outrageous violation of the law, and by
Churchmen as a direct attack upon the Church. Perhaps the contest might have lasted longer, but for an event which
wounded the pride and inflamed the rage of the King. He had, as supreme ordinary, put forth directions, charging the
clergy of the establishment to abstain from touching in their discourses on controverted points of doctrine. Thus,
while sermons in defence of the Roman Catholic religion were preached on every Sunday and holiday within the precincts
of the royal palaces, the Church of the state, the Church of the great majority of the nation, was forbidden to explain
and vindicate her own principles. The spirit of the whole clerical order rose against this injustice. William Sherlock,
a divine of distinguished abilities, who had written with sharpness against Whigs and Dissenters, and had been rewarded
by the government with the Mastership of the Temple and with a pension, was one of the first who incurred the royal
displeasure. His pension was stopped, and he was severely reprimanded. 95 John Sharp, Dean of Norwich and Rector of St. Giles’s in the Fields, soon gave still greater
offence. He was a man of learning and fervent piety, a preacher of great fame, and an exemplary parish priest. In
politics he was, like most of his brethren, a Tory, and had just been appointed one of the royal chaplains. He received
an anonymous letter which purported to come from one of his parishioners who had been staggered by the arguments of
Roman Catholic theologians, and who was anxious to be satisfied that the Church of England was a branch of the true
Church of Christ. No divine, not utterly lost to all sense of religious duty and of professional honour, could refuse
to answer such a call. On the following Sunday Sharp delivered an animated discourse against the high pretensions of
the see of Rome. Some of his expressions were exaggerated, distorted, and carried by talebearers to Whitehall. It was
falsely said that he had spoken with contumely of the theological disquisitions which had been found in the strong box
of the late King, and which the present King had published. Compton, the Bishop of London, received orders from
Sunderland to suspend Sharp till the royal pleasure should be further known. The Bishop was in great perplexity. His
recent conduct in the House of Lords had given deep offence to the court. Already his name had been struck out of the
list of Privy Councillors. Already he had been dismissed from his office in the royal chapel. He was unwilling to give
fresh provocation but the act which he was directed to perform was a judicial act. He felt that it was unjust, and he
was assured by the best advisers that it was also illegal, to inflict punishment without giving any opportunity for
defence. He accordingly, in the humblest terms, represented his difficulties to the King, and privately requested Sharp
not to appear in the pulpit for the present. Reasonable as were Compton’s scruples, obsequious as were his apologies,
James was greatly incensed. What insolence to plead either natural justice or positive law in opposition to an express
command of the Sovereign Sharp was forgotten. The Bishop became a mark for the whole vengeance of the government.
96 The King felt more painfully than ever the want of that
tremendous engine which had once coerced refractory ecclesiastics. He probably knew that, for a few angry words uttered
against his father’s government, Bishop Williams had been suspended by the High Commission from all ecclesiastical
dignities and functions. The design of reviving that formidable tribunal was pushed on more eagerly than ever. In July
London was alarmed by the news that the King had, in direct defiance of two acts of Parliament drawn in the strongest
terms, entrusted the whole government of the Church to seven Commissioners. 97 The words in which the jurisdiction of these officers was described were loose, and might be
stretched to almost any extent. All colleges and grammar schools, even those founded by the liberality of private
benefactors, were placed under the authority of the new board. All who depended for bread on situations in the Church
or in academical institutions, from the Primate down to the youngest curate, from the Vicechancellors of Oxford and
Cambridge down to the humblest pedagogue who taught Corderius, were at the royal mercy. If any one of those many
thousands was suspected of doing or saying anything distasteful to the government, the Commissioners might cite him
before them. In their mode of dealing with him they were fettered by no rules. They were themselves at once prosecutors
and judges. The accused party was furnished with no copy of the charge. He was examined and crossexamined. If his
answers did not give satisfaction, he was liable to be suspended from his office, to be ejected from it, to be
pronounced incapable of holding any preferment in future. If he were contumacious, he might be excommunicated, or, in
other words, be deprived of all civil rights and imprisoned for life. He might also, at the discretion of the court, be
loaded with all the costs of the proceeding by which he had been reduced to beggary. No appeal was given. The
Commissioners were directed to execute their office notwithstanding any law which might be, or might seem to be,
inconsistent with these regulations. Lastly, lest any person should doubt that it was intended to revive that terrible
court from which the Long Parliament had freed the nation, the new tribunal was directed to use a seal bearing exactly
the same device and the same superscription with the seal of the old High Commission. 98

The chief Commissioner was the Chancellor. His presence and assent were necessary to every proceeding. All men knew
how unjustly, insolently, and barbarously he had acted in courts where he had been, to a certain extent, restrained by
the known laws of England. It was, therefore, not difficult to foresee how he would conduct himself in a situation in
which he was at entire liberty to make forms of procedure and rules of evidence for himself.

Of the other six Commissioners three were prelates and three laymen. The name of Archbishop Sancroft stood first.
But he was fully convinced that the court was illegal, that all its judgments would be null, and that by sitting in it
he should incur a serious responsibility. He therefore determined not to comply with the royal mandate. He did not,
however, act on this occasion with that courage and sincerity which he showed when driven to extremity two years later.
He begged to be excused on the plea of business and ill health. The other members of the board, he added, were men of
too much ability to need his assistance. These disingenuous apologies ill became the Primate of all England at such a
crisis; nor did they avert the royal displeasure. Sancroft’s name was not indeed struck out of the list of Privy
Councillors: but, to the bitter mortification of the friends of the Church, he was no longer summoned on Council days.
“If,” said the King, “he is too sick or too busy to go to the Commission, it is a kindness to relieve him from
attendance at Council.” 99

The government found no similar difficulty with Nathaniel Crewe, Bishop of the great and opulent see of Durham, a
man nobly born, and raised so high in his profession that he could scarcely wish to rise higher, but mean, vain, and
cowardly. He had been made Dean of the Chapel Royal when the Bishop of London was banished from the palace. The honour
of being an Ecclesiastical Commissioner turned Crewe’s head. It was to no purpose that some of his friends represented
to him the risk which he ran by sitting in an illegal tribunal. He was not ashamed to answer that he could not live out
of the royal smile, and exultingly expressed his hope that his name would appear in history, a hope which has not been
altogether disappointed. 100

Thomas Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, was the third clerical Commissioner. He was a man to whose talents posterity has
scarcely done justice. Unhappily for his fame, it has been usual to print his verses in collections of the British
poets; and those who judge of him by his verses must consider him as a servile imitator, who, without one spark of
Cowley’s admirable genius, mimicked whatever was least commendable in Cowley’s manner: but those who are acquainted
with Sprat’s prose writings will form a very different estimate of his powers. He was indeed a great master of our
language, and possessed at once the eloquence of the orator, of the controversialist, and of the historian. His moral
character might have passed with little censure had he belonged to a less sacred profession; for the worst that can be
said of him is that he was indolent, luxurious, and worldly: but such failings, though not commonly regarded as very
heinous in men of secular callings, are scandalous in a prelate. The Archbishopric of York was vacant; Sprat hoped to
obtain it, and therefore accepted a seat at the ecclesiastical board: but he was too goodnatured a man to behave
harshly; and he was too sensible a man not to know that he might at some future time be called to a serious account by
a Parliament. He therefore, though he consented to act, tried to do as little mischief, and to make as few enemies, as
possible. 101

The three remaining Commissioners were the Lord Treasurer, the Lord President, and the Chief Justice of the King’s
Bench. Rochester, disapproving and murmuring, consented to serve. Much as he had to endure at the court, he could not
bear to quit it. Much as he loved the Church, he could not bring himself to sacrifice for her sake his white staff, his
patronage, his salary of eight thousand pounds a year, and the far larger indirect emoluments of his office. He excused
his conduct to others, and perhaps to himself, by pleading that, as a Commissioner, he might be able to prevent much
evil, and that, if he refused to act, some person less attached to the Protestant religion would be found to replace
him. Sunderland was the representative of the Jesuitical cabal. Herbert’s recent decision on the question of the
dispensing power seemed to prove that he would not flinch from any service which the King might require.

As soon as the Commission had been opened, the Bishop of London was cited before the new tribunal. He appeared. “I
demand of you,” said Jeffreys, “a direct and positive answer. Why did not you suspend Dr. Sharp?”

The Bishop requested a copy of the Commission in order that he might know by what authority he was thus
interrogated. “If you mean,” said Jeffreys, “to dispute our authority, I shall take another course with you. As to the
Commission, I do not doubt that you have seen it. At all events you may see it in any coffeehouse for a penny.” The
insolence of the Chancellor’s reply appears to have shocked the other Commissioners, and he was forced to make some
awkward apologies. He then returned to the point from which he had started. “This,” he said, “is not a court in which
written charges are exhibited. Our proceedings are summary, and by word of mouth. The question is a plain one. Why did
you not obey the King?” With some difficulty Compton obtained a brief delay, and the assistance of counsel. When the
case had been heard, it was evident to all men that the Bishop had done only what he was bound to do. The Treasurer,
the Chief Justice, and Sprat were for acquittal. The King’s wrath was moved. It seemed that his Ecclesiastical
Commission would fail him as his Tory Parliament had failed him. He offered Rochester a simple choice, to pronounce the
Bishop guilty, or to quit the Treasury. Rochester was base enough to yield. Compton was suspended from all spiritual
functions; and the charge of his great diocese was committed to his judges, Sprat and Crewe. He continued, however, to
reside in his palace and to receive his revenues; for it was known that, had any attempt been made to deprive him of
his temporalities, he would have put himself under the protection of the common law; and Herbert himself declared that,
at common law, judgment must be given against the crown. This consideration induced the King to pause. Only a few weeks
had elapsed since he had packed the courts of Westminster Hall in order to obtain a decision in favour of his
dispensing power. He now found that, unless he packed them again, he should not be able to obtain a decision in favour
of the proceedings of his Ecclesiastical Commission. He determined, therefore, to postpone for a short time the
confiscation of the freehold property of refractory clergymen. 102

The temper of the nation was indeed such as might well make him hesitate. During some months discontent had been
steadily and rapidly increasing. The celebration of the Roman Catholic worship had long been prohibited by Act of
Parliament. During several generations no Roman Catholic clergyman had dared to exhibit himself in any public place
with the badges of his office. Against the regular clergy, and against the restless and subtle Jesuits by name, had
been enacted a succession of rigorous statutes. Every Jesuit who set foot in this country was liable to be hanged,
drawn, and quartered. A reward was offered for his detection. He was not allowed to take advantage of the general rule,
that men are not bound to accuse themselves. Whoever was suspected of being a Jesuit might be interrogated, and, if he
refused to answer, might be sent to prison for life. 103
These laws, though they had not, except when there was supposed to be some peculiar danger, been strictly executed, and
though they had never prevented Jesuits from resorting to England, had made disguise necessary. But all disguise was
now thrown off. Injudicious members of the King’s Church, encouraged by him, took a pride in defying statutes which
were still of undoubted validity, and feelings which had a stronger hold of the national mind than at any former
period. Roman Catholic chapels rose all over the country. Cowls, girdles of ropes, and strings of beads constantly
appeared in the streets, and astonished a population, the oldest of whom had never seen a conventual garb except on the
stage. A convent rose at Clerkenwell on the site of the ancient cloister of Saint John. The Franciscans occupied a
mansion in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The Carmelites were quartered in the City. A society of Benedictine monks was lodged
in Saint James’s Palace. In the Savoy a spacious house, including a church and a school, was built for the Jesuits.
104 The skill and care with which those fathers had, during
several generations, conducted the education of youth, had drawn forth reluctant praises from the wisest Protestants.
Bacon had pronounced the mode of instruction followed in the Jesuit colleges to be the best yet known in the world, and
had warmly expressed his regret that so admirable a system of intellectual and moral discipline should be subservient
to the interests of a corrupt religion. 105 It was not
improbable that the new academy in the Savoy might, under royal patronage, prove a formidable rival to the great
foundations of Eton, Westminster, and Winchester. Indeed, soon after the school was opened, the classes consisted of
four hundred boys, about one half of whom were Protestants. The Protestant pupils were not required to attend mass: but
there could be no doubt that the influence of able preceptors, devoted to the Roman Catholic Church, and versed in all
the arts which win the confidence and affection of youth, would make many converts.

These things produced great excitement among the populace, which is always more moved by what impresses the senses
than by what is addressed to the reason. Thousands of rude and ignorant men, to whom the dispensing power and the
Ecclesiastical Commission were words without a meaning, saw with dismay and indignation a Jesuit college rising on the
banks of the Thames, friars in hoods and gowns walking in the Strand, and crowds of devotees pressing in at the doors
of temples where homage was paid to graven images. Riots broke out in several parts of the country. At Coventry and
Worcester the Roman Catholic worship was violently interrupted. 106 At Bristol the rabble, countenanced, it was said, by the magistrates, exhibited a profane and
indecent pageant, in which the Virgin Mary was represented by a buffoon, and in which a mock host was carried in
procession. The garrison was called out to disperse the mob. The mob, then and ever since one of the fiercest in the
kingdom, resisted. Blows were exchanged, and serious hurts inflicted.107 The agitation was great in the capital, and greater in the City, properly so called, than at
Westminster. For the people of Westminster had been accustomed to see among them the private chapels of Roman Catholic
Ambassadors: but the City had not, within living memory, been polluted by any idolatrous exhibition. Now, however, the
resident of the Elector Palatine, encouraged by the King, fitted up a chapel in Lime Street. The heads of the
corporation, though men selected for office on account of their known Toryism, protested against this proceeding,
which, as they said, the ablest gentlemen of the long robe regarded as illegal. The Lord Mayor was ordered to appear
before the Privy Council. “Take heed what you do,” said the King. “Obey me; and do not trouble yourself either about
gentlemen of the long robe or gentlemen of the short robe.” The Chancellor took up the word, and reprimanded the
unfortunate magistrate with the genuine eloquence of the Old Bailey bar. The chapel was opened. All the neighbourhood
was soon in commotion. Great crowds assembled in Cheapside to attack the new mass house. The priests were insulted. A
crucifix was taken out of the building and set up on the parish pump. The Lord Mayor came to quell the tumult, but was
received with cries of “No wooden gods.” The trainbands were ordered to disperse the crowd: but they shared in the
popular feeling; and murmurs were heard from the ranks, “We cannot in conscience fight for Popery.”108

The Elector Palatine was, like James, a sincere and zealous Catholic, and was, like James, the ruler of a Protestant
people; but the two princes resembled each other little in temper and understanding. The Elector had promised to
respect the rights of the Church which he found established in his dominions. He had strictly kept his word, and had
not suffered himself to be provoked to any violence by the indiscretion of preachers who, in their antipathy to his
faith, occasionally forgot the respect which they owed to his person. 109 He learned, with concern, that great offence had been given to the people of London by the
injudicious act of his representative, and, much to his honour, declared that he would forego the privilege to which,
as a sovereign prince, he was entitled, rather than endanger the peace of a great city. “I, too,” he wrote to James,
“have Protestant subjects; and I know with how much caution and delicacy it is necessary that a Catholic prince so
situated should act.” James, instead of expressing gratitude for this humane and considerate conduct, turned the letter
into ridicule before the foreign ministers. It was determined that the Elector should have a chapel in the City whether
he would or not, and that, if the trainbands refused to do their duty, their place should be supplied by the Guards.
110

The effect of these disturbances on trade was serious. The Dutch minister informed the States General that the
business of the Exchange was at a stand. The Commissioners of the Customs reported to the King that, during the month
which followed the opening of Lime Street Chapel, the receipt in the port of the Thames had fallen off by some
thousands of pounds. 111 Several Aldermen, who, though
zealous royalists appointed under the new charter, were deeply interested in the commercial prosperity of their city,
and loved neither Popery nor martial law, tendered their resignations. But the King was resolved not to yield. He
formed a camp on Hounslow Heath, and collected there, within a circumference of about two miles and a half, fourteen
battalions of foot and thirty-two squadrons of horse, amounting to thirteen thousand fighting men. Twenty-six pieces of
artillery, and many wains laden with arms and ammunition, were dragged from the Tower through the City to Hounslow.
112 The Londoners saw this great force assembled in their
neighbourhood with a terror which familiarity soon diminished. A visit to Hounslow became their favourite amusement on
holidays. The camp presented the appearance of a vast fair. Mingled with the musketeers and dragoons, a multitude of
fine gentlemen and ladies from Soho Square, sharpers and painted women from Whitefriars, invalids in sedans, monks in
hoods and gowns, lacqueys in rich liveries, pedlars, orange girls, mischievous apprentices and gaping clowns, was
constantly passing and repassing through the long lanes of tents. From some pavilions were heard the noises of drunken
revelry, from others the curses of gamblers. In truth the place was merely a gay suburb of the capital. The King, as
was amply proved two years later, had greatly miscalculated. He had forgotten that vicinity operates in more ways than
one. He had hoped that his army would overawe London: but the result of his policy was that the feelings and opinions
of London took complete possession of his army. 113

Scarcely indeed had the encampment been formed when there were rumours of quarrels between the Protestant and Popish
soldiers. 114 A little tract, entitled A humble and hearty
Address to all English Protestants in the Army, had been actively circulated through the ranks. The writer vehemently
exhorted the troops to use their arms in defence, not of the mass book, but of the Bible, of the Great Charter, and of
the Petition of Right. He was a man already under the frown of power. His character was remarkable, and his history not
uninstructive.

His name was Samuel Johnson. He was a priest of the Church of England, and had been chaplain to Lord Russell.
Johnson was one of those persons who are mortally hated by their opponents, and less loved than respected by their
allies. His morals were pure, his religious feelings ardent, his learning and abilities not contemptible, his judgment
weak, his temper acrimonious, turbulent, and unconquerably stubborn. His profession made him peculiarly odious to the
zealous supporters of monarchy; for a republican in holy orders was a strange and almost an unnatural being. During the
late reign Johnson had published a book entitled Julian the Apostate. The object of this work was to show that the
Christians of the fourth century did not hold the doctrine of nonresistance. It was easy to produce passages from
Chrysostom and Jerome written in a spirit very different from that of the Anglican divines who preached against the
Exclusion Bill. Johnson, however, went further. He attempted to revive the odious imputation which had, for very
obvious reasons, been thrown by Libanius on the Christian soldiers of Julian, and insinuated that the dart which slew
the imperial renegade came, not from the enemy, but from some Rumbold or Ferguson in the Roman ranks. A hot controversy
followed. Whig and Tory disputants wrangled fiercely about an obscure passage, in which Gregory of Nazianzus praises a
pious Bishop who was going to bastinado somebody. The Whigs maintained that the holy man was going to bastinado the
Emperor; the Tories that, at the worst, he was only going to bastinado a captain of the guard. Johnson prepared a reply
to his assailants, in which he drew an elaborate parallel between Julian and James, then Duke of York, Julian had,
during many years, pretended to abhor idolatry, while in heart an idolater. Julian had, to serve a turn, occasionally
affected respect for the rights of conscience. Julian had punished cities which were zealous for the true religion, by
taking away their municipal privileges. Julian had, by his flatterers, been called the Just. James was provoked beyond
endurance. Johnson was prosecuted for a libel, convicted, and condemned to a fine which he had no means of paying. He
was therefore kept in gaol; and it seemed likely that his confinement would end only with his life. 115

Over the room which he occupied in the King’s Bench prison lodged another offender whose character well deserves to
be studied. This was Hugh Speke, a young man of good family, but of a singularly base and depraved nature. His love of
mischief and of dark and crooked ways amounted almost to madness. To cause confusion without being found out was his
business and his pastime; and he had a rare skill in using honest enthusiasts as the instruments of his coldblooded
malice. He had attempted, by means of one of his puppets, to fasten on Charles and James the crime of murdering Essex
in the Tower. On this occasion the agency of Speke had been traced and, though he succeeded in throwing the greater
part of the blame on his dupe, he had not escaped with impunity. He was now a prisoner; but his fortune enabled him to
live with comfort; and he was under so little restraint that he was able to keep up regular communication with one of
his confederates who managed a secret press.

Johnson was the very man for Speke’s purposes, zealous and intrepid, a scholar and a practised controversialist, yet
as simple as a child. A close intimacy sprang up between the two fellow prisoners. Johnson wrote a succession of bitter
and vehement treatises which Speke conveyed to the printer. When the camp was formed at Hounslow, Speke urged Johnson
to compose an address which might excite the troops to mutiny. The paper was instantly drawn up. Many thousands of
copies were struck off and brought to Speke’s room, whence they were distributed over the whole country, and especially
among the soldiers. A milder government than that which then ruled England would have been moved to high resentment by
such a provocation. Strict search was made. A subordinate agent who had been employed to circulate the address saved
himself by giving up Johnson; and Johnson was not the man to save himself by giving up Speke. An information was filed,
and a conviction obtained without difficulty. Julian Johnson, as he was popularly called, was sentenced to stand thrice
in the pillory, and to be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. The Judge, Sir Francis Withins, told the criminal to be
thankful for the great lenity of the Attorney General, who might have treated the case as one of high treason. “I owe
him no thanks,” answered Johnson, dauntlessly. “Am I, whose only crime is that I have defended the Church and the laws,
to be grateful for being scourged like a dog, while Popish scribblers are suffered daily to insult the Church and to
violate the laws with impunity?” The energy with which he spoke was such that both the Judges and the crown lawyers
thought it necessary to vindicate themselves, and protested that they knew of no Popish publications such as those to
which the prisoner alluded. He instantly drew from his pocket some Roman Catholic books and trinkets which were then
freely exposed for sale under the royal patronage, read aloud the titles of the books, and threw a rosary across the
table to the King’s counsel. “And now,” he cried with a loud voice, “I lay this information before God, before this
court, and before the English people. We shall soon see whether Mr. Attorney will do his duty.”

It was resolved that, before the punishment was inflicted, Johnson should be degraded from the priesthood. The
prelates who had been charged by the Ecclesiastical Commission with the care of the diocese of London cited him before
them in the chapter house of Saint Paul’s Cathedral. The manner in which he went through the ceremony made a deep
impression on many minds. When he was stripped of his sacred robe he exclaimed, “You are taking away my gown because I
have tried to keep your gowns on your backs.” The only part of the formalities which seemed to distress him was the
plucking of the Bible out of his hand. He made a faint struggle to retain the sacred book, kissed it, and burst into
tears. “You cannot,” he said, “deprive me of the hopes which I owe to it.” Some attempts were made to obtain a
remission of the flogging. A Roman Catholic priest offered to intercede in consideration of a bribe of two hundred
pounds. The money was raised; and the priest did his best, but in vain.

“Mr. Johnson,” said the King, “has the spirit of a martyr; and it is fit that he should be one.” William the Third
said, a few years later, of one of the most acrimonious and intrepid Jacobites, “He has set his heart on being a
martyr, and I have set mine on disappointing him.” These two speeches would alone suffice to explain the widely
different fates of the two princes.

The day appointed for the flogging came. A whip of nine lashes was used. Three hundred and seventeen stripes were
inflicted; but the sufferer never winced. He afterwards said that the pain was cruel, but that, as he was dragged at
the tail of the cart, he remembered how patiently the cross had been borne up Mount Calvary, and was so much supported
by the thought that, but for the fear of incurring the suspicion of vain glory, he would have sung a psalm with as firm
and cheerful a voice as if he had been worshipping God in the congregation. It is impossible not to wish that so much
heroism had been less alloyed by intemperance and intolerance. 116

Among the clergy of the Church of England Johnson found no sympathy. He had attempted to justify rebellion; he had
even hinted approbation of regicide; and they still, in spite of much provocation, clung to the doctrine of
nonresistance. But they saw with alarm and concern the progress of what they considered as a noxious superstition, and,
while they abjured all thought of defending their religion by the sword, betook themselves manfully to weapons of a
different kind. To preach against the errors of Popery was now regarded by them as a point of duty and a point of
honour. The London clergy, who were then in abilities and influence decidedly at the head of their profession, set an
example which was bravely followed by their ruder brethren all over the country. Had only a few bold men taken this
freedom, they would probably have been at once cited before the Ecclesiastical Commission; but it was hardly possible
to punish an offence which was committed every Sunday by thousands of divines, from Berwick to Penzance. The presses of
the capital, of Oxford, and of Cambridge, never rested. The act which subjected literature to a censorship did not
seriously impede the exertions of Protestant controversialists; for it contained a proviso in favour of the two
Universities, and authorised the publication of theological works licensed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was
therefore out of the power of the government to silence the defenders of the established religion. They were a
numerous, an intrepid, and a well appointed band of combatants. Among them were eloquent declaimers, expert
dialecticians, scholars deeply read in the writings of the fathers and in all parts of ecclesiastical history. Some of
them, at a later period, turned against one another the formidable arms which they had wielded against the common
enemy, and by their fierce contentions and insolent triumphs brought reproach on the Church which they had saved. But
at present they formed an united phalanx. In the van appeared a rank of steady and skilful veterans, Tillotson,
Stillingfleet, Sherlock, Prideaux, Whitby, Patrick, Tenison, Wake. The rear was brought up by the most distinguished
bachelors of arts who were studying for deacon’s orders. Conspicuous amongst the recruits whom Cambridge sent to the
field was a distinguished pupil of the great Newton, Henry Wharton, who had, a few months before, been senior wrangler
of his year, and whose early death was soon after deplored by men of all parties as an irreparable loss to letters.
117 Oxford was not less proud of a youth, whose great
powers, first essayed in this conflict, afterwards troubled the Church and the State during forty eventful years,
Francis Atterbury. By such men as these every question in issue between the Papists and the Protestants was debated,
sometimes in a popular style which boys and women could comprehend, sometimes with the utmost subtlety of logic, and
sometimes with an immense display of learning. The pretensions of the Holy See, the authority of tradition, purgatory,
transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the mass, the adoration of the host, the denial of the cup to the laity,
confession, penance, indulgences, extreme unction, the invocation of saints, the adoration of images, the celibacy of
the clergy, the monastic vows, the practice of celebrating public worship in a tongue unknown to the multitude, the
corruptions of the court of Rome, the history of the Reformation, the characters of the chief reformers, were copiously
discussed. Great numbers of absurd legends about miracles wrought by saints and relics were translated from the Italian
and published as specimens of the priestcraft by which the greater part of Christendom had been fooled. Of the tracts
put forth on these subjects by Anglican divines during the short reign of James the Second many have probably perished.
Those which may still be found in our great libraries make up a mass of near twenty thousand pages. 118

The Roman Catholics did not yield the victory without a struggle. One of them, named Henry Hills, had been appointed
printer to the royal household and chapel, and had been placed by the King at the head of a great office in London from
which theological tracts came forth by hundreds. Obadiah Walker’s press was not less active at Oxford. But, with the
exception of some bad translations of Bossuet’s admirable works, these establishments put forth nothing of the smallest
value. It was indeed impossible for any intelligent and candid Roman Catholic to deny that the champions of his Church
were, in every talent and acquirement, completely over-matched. The ablest of them would not, on the other side, have
been considered as of the third rate. Many of them, even when they had something to say, knew not how to say it. They
had been excluded by their religion from English schools and universities; nor had they ever, till the accession of
James, found England an agreeable, or even a safe, residence. They had therefore passed the greater part of their lives
on the Continent, and had almost unlearned their mother tongue. When they preached, their outlandish accent moved the
derision of the audience. They spelt like washerwomen. Their diction was disfigured by foreign idioms; and, when they
meant to be eloquent, they imitated, as well as they could, what was considered as fine writing in those Italian
academies where rhetoric had then reached the last stage of corruption. Disputants labouring under these disadvantages
would scarcely, even with truth on their side, have been able to make head against men whose style is eminently
distinguished by simple purity and grace. 119

The situation of England in the year 1686 cannot be better described than in the words of the French Ambassador.
“The discontent,” he wrote, “is great and general: but the fear of incurring still worse evils restrains all who have
anything to lose. The King openly expresses his joy at finding himself in a situation to strike bold strokes. He likes
to be complimented on this subject. He has talked to me about it, and has assured me that he will not flinch.”
120

Meanwhile in other parts of the empire events of grave importance had taken place. The situation of the episcopalian
Protestants of Scotland differed widely from that in which their English brethren stood. In the south of the island the
religion of the state was the religion of the people, and had a strength altogether independent of the strength derived
from the support of the government. The sincere conformists were far more numerous than the Papists and the Protestant
Dissenters taken together. The Established Church of Scotland was the Church of a small minority. The majority of the
lowland population was firmly attached to the Presbyterian discipline. Prelacy was abhorred by the great body of
Scottish Protestants, both as an unscriptural and as a foreign institution. It was regarded by the disciples of Knox as
a relic of the abominations of Babylon the Great. It painfully reminded a people proud of the memory of Wallace and
Bruce that Scotland, since her sovereigns had succeeded to a fairer inheritance, had been independent in name only. The
episcopal polity was also closely associated in the public mind with all the evils produced by twenty-five years of
corrupt and cruel maladministration. Nevertheless this polity stood, though on a narrow basis and amidst fearful
storms, tottering indeed, yet upheld by the civil magistrate, and leaning for support, whenever danger became serious,
on the power of England. The records of the Scottish Parliament were thick set with laws denouncing vengeance on those
who in any direction strayed from the prescribed pale. By an Act passed in the time of Knox, and breathing his spirit,
it was a high crime to hear mass, and the third offence was capital. 121 An Act recently passed, at the instance of James, made it death to preach in any Presbyterian
conventicle whatever, and even to attend such a conventicle in the open air. 122 The Eucharist was not, as in England, degraded into a civil test; but no person could hold any
office, could sit in Parliament, or could even vote for a member of Parliament, without subscribing, under the sanction
of an oath, a declaration which condemned in the strongest terms the principles both of the Papists and of the
Covenanters. 123

In the Privy Council of Scotland there were two parties corresponding to the two parties which were contending
against each other at Whitehall. William Douglas, Duke of Queensberry, was Lord Treasurer, and had, during some years,
been considered as first minister. He was nearly connected by affinity, by similarity of opinions, and by similarity of
temper, with the Treasurer of England. Both were Tories: both were men of hot temper and strong prejudices; both were
ready to support their master in any attack on the civil liberties of his people; but both were sincerely attached to
the Established Church. Queensberry had early notified to the court that, if any innovation affecting that Church were
contemplated, to such innovation he could be no party. But among his colleagues were several men not less unprincipled
than Sunderland. In truth the Council chamber at Edinburgh had been, during a quarter of a century, a seminary of all
public and private vices; and some of the politicians whose character had been formed there had a peculiar hardness of
heart and forehead to which Westminster, even in that bad age, could hardly show anything quite equal. The Chancellor,
James Drummond, Earl of Perth, and his brother, the Secretary of State, John Lord Melfort, were bent on supplanting
Queensberry. The Chancellor had already an unquestionable title to the royal favour. He had brought into use a little
steel thumbscrew which gave such exquisite torment that it had wrung confessions even out of men on whom His Majesty’s
favourite boot had been tried in vain. 124 But it was well
known that even barbarity was not so sure a way to the heart of James as apostasy. To apostasy, therefore, Perth and
Melfort resorted with a certain audacious baseness which no English statesman could hope to emulate. They declared that
the papers found in the strong box of Charles the Second had converted them both to the true faith; and they began to
confess and to hear mass. 125 How little conscience had to
do with Perth’s change of religion he amply proved by taking to wife, a few weeks later, in direct defiance of the laws
of the Church which he had just joined, a lady who was his cousin german, without waiting for a dispensation. When the
good Pope learned this, he said, with scorn and indignation which well became him, that this was a strange sort of
conversion. 126 But James was more easily satisfied. The
apostates presented themselves at Whitehall, and there received such assurances of his favour, that they ventured to
bring direct charges against the Treasurer. Those charges, however, were so evidently frivolous that James was forced
to acquit the accused minister; and many thought that the Chancellor had ruined himself by his malignant eagerness to
ruin his rival. There were a few, however, who judged more correctly. Halifax, to whom Perth expressed some
apprehensions, answered with a sneer that there was no danger. “Be of good cheer, my Lord; thy faith hath made thee
whole.” The prediction was correct. Perth and Melfort went back to Edinburgh, the real heads of the government of their
country. 127 Another member of the Scottish Privy Council,
Alexander Stuart, Earl of Murray, the descendant and heir of the Regent, abjured the religion of which his illustrious
ancestor had been the foremost champion, and declared himself a member of the Church of Rome. Devoted as Queensberry
had always been to the cause of prerogative, he could not stand his ground against competitors who were willing to pay
such a price for the favour of the court. He had to endure a succession of mortifications and humiliations similar to
those which, about the same time, began to embitter the life of his friend Rochester. Royal letters came down
authorising Papists to hold offices without taking the test. The clergy were strictly charged not to reflect on the
Roman Catholic religion in their discourses. The Chancellor took on himself to send the macers of the Privy Council
round to the few printers and booksellers who could then be found in Edinburgh, charging them not to publish any work
without his license. It was well understood that this order was intended to prevent the circulation of Protestant
treatises. One honest stationer told the messengers that he had in his shop a book which reflected in very coarse terms
on Popery, and begged to know whether he might sell it. They asked to see it; and he showed them a copy of the Bible.
128 A cargo of images, beads, crosses and censers arrived
at Leith directed to Lord Perth. The importation of such articles had long been considered as illegal; but now the
officers of the customs allowed the superstitious garments and trinkets to pass.129 In a short time it was known that a Popish chapel had been fitted up in the Chancellor’s
house, and that mass was regularly said there. The mob rose. The mansion where the idolatrous rites were celebrated was
fiercely attacked. The iron bars which protected the windows were wrenched off. Lady Perth and some of her female
friends were pelted with mud. One rioter was seized, and ordered by the Privy Council to be whipped. His fellows
rescued him and beat the hangman. The city was all night in confusion. The students of the University mingled with the
crowd and animated the tumult. Zealous burghers drank the health of the college lads and confusion to Papists, and
encouraged each other to face the troops. The troops were already under arms. They were received with a shower of
stones, which wounded an officer. Orders were given to fire; and several citizens were killed. The disturbance was
serious; but the Drummonds, inflamed by resentment and ambition, exaggerated it strangely. Queensberry observed that
their reports would lead any person, who had not been a witness of the tumult, to believe that a sedition as formidable
as that of Masaniello had been raging at Edinburgh. They in return accused the Treasurer, not only of extenuating the
crime of the insurgents, but of having himself prompted it, and did all in their power to obtain evidence of his guilt.
One of the ringleaders, who had been taken, was offered a pardon if he would own that Queensberry had set him on; but
the same religious enthusiasm, which had impelled the unhappy prisoner to criminal violence, prevented him from
purchasing his life by a calumny. He and several of his accomplices were hanged. A soldier, who was accused of
exclaiming, during the affray, that he should like to run his sword through a Papist, was shot; and Edinburgh was again
quiet: but the sufferers were regarded as martyrs; and the Popish Chancellor became an object of mortal hatred, which
in no long time was largely gratified. 130

The King was much incensed. The news of the tumult reached him when the Queen, assisted by the Jesuits, had just
triumphed over Lady Dorchester and her Protestant allies. The malecontents should find, he declared, that the only
effect of the resistance offered to his will was to make him more and more resolute. 131 He sent orders to the Scottish Council to punish the guilty with the
utmost severity, and to make unsparing use of the boot. 132
He pretended to be fully convinced of the Treasurer’s innocence, and wrote to that minister in gracious words; but the
gracious words were accompanied by ungracious acts. The Scottish Treasury was put into commission in spite of the
earnest remonstrances of Rochester, who probably saw his own fate prefigured in that of his kinsman. 133 Queensberry was, indeed, named First Commissioner, and was made
President of the Privy Council: but his fall, though thus broken, was still a fall. He was also removed from the
government of the castle of Edinburgh, and was succeeded in that confidential post by the Duke of Gordon, a Roman
Catholic. 134

And now a letter arrived from London, fully explaining to the Scottish Privy Council the intentions of the King.
What he wanted was that the Roman Catholics should be exempted from all laws imposing penalties and disabilities on
account of nonconformity, but that the persecution of the Covenanters should go on without mitigation. 135 This scheme encountered strenuous opposition in the Council. Some
members were unwilling to see the existing laws relaxed. Others, who were by no means averse to some relaxation, yet
felt that it would be monstrous to admit Roman Catholics to the highest honours of the state, and yet to leave
unrepealed the Act which made it death to attend a Presbyterian conventicle. The answer of the board was, therefore,
less obsequious than usual. The King in reply sharply reprimanded his undutiful Councillors, and ordered three of them,
the Duke of Hamilton, Sir George Lockhart, and General Drummond, to attend him at Westminster. Hamilton’s abilities and
knowledge, though by no means such as would have sufficed to raise an obscure man to eminence, appeared highly
respectable in one who was premier peer of Scotland. Lockhart had long been regarded as one of the first jurists,
logicians, and orators that his country had produced, and enjoyed also that sort of consideration which is derived from
large possessions; for his estate was such as at that time very few Scottish nobles possessed. 136 He had been lately appointed President of the Court of Session. Drummond,
a younger brother of Perth and Melfort, was commander of the forces in Scotland. He was a loose and profane man: but a
sense of honour which his two kinsmen wanted restrained him from a public apostasy. He lived and died, in the
significant phrase of one of his countrymen, a bad Christian, but a good Protestant. 137

James was pleased by the dutiful language which the three Councillors used when first they appeared before him. He
spoke highly of them to Barillon, and particularly extolled Lockhart as the ablest and most eloquent Scotchman living.
They soon proved, however, less tractable than had been expected; and it was rumoured at court that they had been
perverted by the company which they had kept in London. Hamilton lived much with zealous churchmen; and it might be
feared that Lockhart, who was related to the Wharton family, had fallen into still worse society. In truth it was
natural that statesmen fresh from a country where opposition in any other form than that of insurrection and
assassination had long been almost unknown, and where all that was not lawless fury was abject submission, should have
been struck by the earnest and stubborn, yet sober, discontent which pervaded England, and should have been emboldened
to try the experiment of constitutional resistance to the royal will. They indeed declared themselves willing to grant
large relief to the Roman Catholics; but on two conditions; first, that similar indulgence should be extended to the
Calvinistic sectaries; and, secondly, that the King should bind himself by a solemn promise not to attempt anything to
the prejudice of the Protestant religion.

Both conditions were highly distasteful to James. He reluctantly agreed, however, after a dispute which lasted
several days, that some indulgence should be granted to the Presbyterians but he would by no means consent to allow
them the full liberty which he demanded for members of his own communion. 138 To the second condition proposed by the three Scottish Councillors he positively refused to
listen. The Protestant religion, he said, was false and he would not give any guarantee that he would not use his power
to the prejudice of a false religion. The altercation was long, and was not brought to a conclusion satisfactory to
either party.139

The time fixed for the meeting of the Scottish Estates drew near; and it was necessary that the three Councillors
should leave London to attend their parliamentary duty at Edinburgh. On this occasion another affront was offered to
Queensberry. In the late session he had held the office of Lord High Commissioner, and had in that capacity represented
the majesty of the absent King. This dignity, the greatest to which a Scottish noble could aspire, was now transferred
to the renegade Murray.

On the twenty-ninth of April the Parliament met at Edinburgh. A letter from the King was read. He exhorted the
Estates to give relief to his Roman Catholic subjects, and offered in return a free trade with England and an amnesty
for political offences. A committee was appointed to draw up an answer. That committee, though named by Murray, and
composed of Privy Councillors and courtiers, framed a reply, full indeed of dutiful and respectful expressions, yet
clearly indicating a determination to refuse what the King demanded. The Estates, it was said, would go as far as their
consciences would allow to meet His Majesty’s wishes respecting his subjects of the Roman Catholic religion. These
expressions were far from satisfying the Chancellor; yet, such as they were, he was forced to content himself with
them, and even had some difficulty in persuading the Parliament to adopt them. Objection was taken by some zealous
Protestants to the mention made of the Roman Catholic religion. There was no such religion. There was an idolatrous
apostasy, which the laws punished with the halter, and to which it did not become Christian men to give flattering
titles. To call such a superstition Catholic was to give up the whole question which was at issue between Rome and the
reformed Churches. The offer of a free trade with England was treated as an insult. “Our fathers,” said one orator,
“sold their King for southern gold; and we still lie under the reproach of that foul bargain. Let it not be said of us
that we have sold our God!” Sir John Lauder of Fountainhall, one of the Senators of the College of Justice, suggested
the words, “the persons commonly called Roman Catholics.” “Would you nickname His Majesty?” exclaimed the Chancellor.
The answer drawn by the committee was carried; but a large and respectable minority voted against the proposed words as
too courtly. 140 It was remarked that the representatives
of the towns were, almost to a man, against the government. Hitherto those members had been of small account in the
Parliament, and had generally, been considered as the retainers of powerful noblemen. They now showed, for the first
time, an independence, a resolution, and a spirit of combination which alarmed the court. 141

The answer was so unpleasing to James that he did not suffer it to be printed in the Gazette. Soon he learned that a
law, such as he wished to see passed, would not even be brought in. The Lords of Articles, whose business was to draw
up the acts on which the Estates were afterwards to deliberate, were virtually nominated by himself. Yet even the Lords
of Articles proved refractory. When they met, the three Privy Councillors who had lately returned from London took the
lead in opposition to the royal will. Hamilton declared plainly that he could not do what was asked. He was a faithful
and loyal subject; but there was a limit imposed by conscience. “Conscience!” said the Chancellor: “conscience is a
vague word, which signifies any thing or nothing.” Lockhart, who sate in Parliament as representative of the great
county of Lanark, struck in. “If conscience,” he said, “be a word without meaning, we will change it for another phrase
which, I hope, means something. For conscience let us put the fundamental laws of Scotland.” These words raised a
fierce debate. General Drummond, who represented Perthshire, declared that he agreed with Hamilton and Lockhart. Most
of the Bishops present took the same side. 142

It was plain that, even in the Committee of Articles, James could not command a majority. He was mortified and
irritated by the tidings. He held warm and menacing language, and punished some of his mutinous servants, in the hope
that the rest would take warning. Several persons were dismissed from the Council board. Several were deprived of
pensions, which formed an important part of their income. Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh was the most distinguished
victim. He had long held the office of Lord Advocate, and had taken such a part in the persecution of the Covenanters
that to this day he holds, in the estimation of the austere and godly peasantry of Scotland, a place not far removed
from the unenviable eminence occupied by Claverhouse. The legal attainments of Mackenzie were not of the highest order:
but, as a scholar, a wit, and an orator, he stood high in the opinion of his countrymen; and his renown had spread even
to the coffeehouses of London and the cloisters of Oxford. The remains of his forensic speeches prove him to have been
a man of parts, but are somewhat disfigured by what he doubtless considered as Ciceronian graces, interjections which
show more art than passion, and elaborate amplifications, in which epithet rises above epithet in wearisome climax. He
had now, for the first time, been found scrupulous. He was, therefore, in spite of all his claims on the gratitude of
the government, deprived of his office. He retired into the country, and soon after went up to London for the purpose
of clearing himself, but was refused admission to the royal presence. 143 While the King was thus trying to terrify the Lords of Articles into submission, the popular
voice encouraged them to persist. The utmost exertions of the Chancellor could not prevent the national sentiment from
expressing itself through the pulpit and the press. One tract, written with such boldness and acrimony that no printer
dared to put it in type, was widely circulated in manuscript. The papers which appeared on the other side of the
question had much less effect, though they were disseminated at the public charge, and though the Scottish defenders of
the government were assisted by an English auxiliary of great note, Lestrange, who had been sent down to Edinburgh, and
had apartments in Holyrood House. 144

At length, after three weeks of debate, the Lords of Articles came to a decision. They proposed merely that Roman
Catholics should be permitted to worship God in private houses without incurring any penalty; and it soon appeared
that, far as this measure was from coming up to the King’s demands and expectations, the Estates either would not pass
it at all, or would pass it with great restrictions and modifications.

While the contest lasted the anxiety in London was intense. Every report, every line, from Edinburgh was eagerly
devoured. One day the story ran that Hamilton had given way and that the government would carry every point. Then came
intelligence that the opposition had rallied and was more obstinate than ever. At the most critical moment orders were
sent to the post-office that the bags from Scotland should be transmitted to Whitehall. During a whole week not a
single private letter from beyond the Tweed was delivered in London. In our age such an interruption of communication
would throw the whole island into confusion: but there was then so little trade and correspondence between England and
Scotland that the inconvenience was probably much smaller than has been often occasioned in our own time by a short
delay in the arrival of the Indian mail. While the ordinary channels of information were thus closed, the crowd in the
galleries of Whitehall observed with attention the countenances of the King and his ministers. It was noticed, with
great satisfaction, that, after every express from the North, the enemies of the Protestant religion looked more and
more gloomy. At length, to the general joy, it was announced that the struggle was over, that the government had been
unable to carry its measures, and that the Lord High Commissioner had adjourned the Parliament. 145

If James had not been proof to all warning, these events would have sufficed to warn him. A few months before this
time the most obsequious of English Parliaments had refused to submit to his pleasure. But the most obsequious of
English Parliaments might be regarded as an independent and high spirited assembly when compared with any Parliament
that had ever sate in Scotland; and the servile spirit of Scottish Parliaments was always to be found in the highest
perfection, extracted and condensed, among the Lords of Articles. Yet even the Lords of Articles had been refractory.
It was plain that all those classes, all those institutions, which, up to this year, had been considered as the
strongest supports of monarchical power, must, if the King persisted in his insane policy, be reckoned as parts of the
strength of the opposition. All these signs, however, were lost upon him. To every expostulation he had one answer: he
would never give way; for concession had ruined his father; and his unconquerable firmness was loudly applauded by the
French embassy and by the Jesuitical cabal.

He now proclaimed that he had been only too gracious when he had condescended to ask the assent of the Scottish
Estates to his wishes. His prerogative would enable him not only to protect those whom he favoured, but to punish those
who had crossed him. He was confident that, in Scotland, his dispensing power would not be questioned by any court of
law. There was a Scottish Act of Supremacy which gave to the sovereign such a control over the Church as might have
satisfied Henry the Eighth. Accordingly Papists were admitted in crowds to offices and honours. The Bishop of Dunkeld,
who, as a Lord of Parliament, had opposed the government, was arbitrarily ejected from his see, and a successor was
appointed. Queensberry was stripped of all his employments, and was ordered to remain at Edinburgh till the accounts of
the Treasury during his administration had been examined and approved.146 As the representatives of the towns had been found the most unmanageable part of the
Parliament, it was determined to make a revolution in every burgh throughout the kingdom. A similar change had recently
been effected in England by judicial sentences: but in Scotland a simple mandate of the prince was thought sufficient.
All elections of magistrates and of town councils were prohibited; and the King assumed to himself the right of filling
up the chief municipal offices. 147 In a formal letter to
the Privy Council he announced his intention to fit up a Roman Catholic chapel in his palace of Holyrood; and he gave
orders that the Judges should be directed to treat all the laws against Papists as null, on pain of his high
displeasure. He however comforted the Protestant Episcopalians by assuring them that, though he was determined to
protect the Roman Catholic Church against them, he was equally determined to protect them against any encroachment on
the part of the fanatics. To this communication Perth proposed an answer couched in the most servile terms. The Council
now contained many Papists; the Protestant members who still had seats had been cowed by the King’s obstinacy and
severity; and only a few faint murmurs were heard. Hamilton threw out against the dispensing power some hints which he
made haste to explain away. Lockhart said that he would lose his head rather than sign such a letter as the Chancellor
had drawn, but took care to say this in a whisper which was heard only by friends. Perth’s words were adopted with
inconsiderable modifications; and the royal commands were obeyed; but a sullen discontent spread through that minority
of the Scottish nation by the aid of which the government had hitherto held the majority down. 148

When the historian of this troubled reign turns to Ireland, his task becomes peculiarly difficult and delicate. His
steps — to borrow the fine image used on a similar occasion by a Roman poet — are on the thin crust of ashes, beneath
which the lava is still glowing. The seventeenth century has, in that unhappy country, left to the nineteenth a fatal
heritage of malignant passions. No amnesty for the mutual wrongs inflicted by the Saxon defenders of Londonderry, and
by the Celtic defenders of Limerick, has ever been granted from the heart by either race. To this day a more than
Spartan haughtiness alloys the many noble qualities which characterize the children of the victors, while a Helot
feeling, compounded of awe and hatred, is but too often discernible in the children of the vanquished. Neither of the
hostile castes can justly be absolved from blame; but the chief blame is due to that shortsighted and headstrong prince
who, placed in a situation in which he might have reconciled them, employed all his power to inflame their animosity,
and at length forced them to close in a grapple for life and death.

The grievances under which the members of his Church laboured in Ireland differed widely from those which he was
attempting to remove in England and Scotland. The Irish Statute Book, afterwards polluted by intolerance as barbarous
as that of the dark ages, then contained scarce a single enactment, and not a single stringent enactment, imposing any
penalty on Papists as such. On our side of Saint George’s Channel every priest who received a neophyte into the bosom
of the Church of Rome was liable to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. On the other side he incurred no such danger. A
Jesuit who landed at Dover took his life in his hand; but he walked the streets of Dublin in security. Here no man
could hold office, or even earn his livelihood as a barrister or a schoolmaster, without previously taking the oath of
supremacy, but in Ireland a public functionary was not held to be under the necessity of taking that oath unless it
were formally tendered to him. 149 It therefore did not
exclude from employment any person whom the government wished to promote. The sacramental test and the declaration
against transubstantiation were unknown nor was either House of Parliament closed against any religious sect.

It might seem, therefore, that the Irish Roman Catholic was in a situation which his English and Scottish brethren
in the faith might well envy. In fact, however, his condition was more pitiable and irritating than theirs. For, though
not persecuted as a Roman Catholic, he was oppressed as an Irishman. In his country the same line of demarcation which
separated religions separated races; and he was of the conquered, the subjugated, the degraded race. On the same soil
dwelt two populations, locally intermixed, morally and politically sundered. The difference of religion was by no means
the only difference, and was perhaps not even the chief difference, which existed between them. They sprang from
different stocks. They spoke different languages. They had different national characters as strongly opposed as any two
national characters in Europe. They were in widely different stages of civilisation. Between two such populations there
could be little sympathy; and centuries of calamities and wrongs had generated a strong antipathy. The relation in
which the minority stood to the majority resembled the relation in which the followers of William the Conqueror stood
to the Saxon churls, or the relation in which the followers of Cortes stood to the Indians of Mexico.

The appellation of Irish was then given exclusively to the Celts and to those families which, though not of Celtic
origin, had in the course of ages degenerated into Celtic manners. These people, probably somewhat under a million in
number, had, with few exceptions, adhered to the Church of Rome. Among them resided about two hundred thousand
colonists, proud of their Saxon blood and of their Protestant faith. 150

The great preponderance of numbers on one side was more than compensated by a great superiority of intelligence,
vigour, and organization on the other. The English settlers seem to have been, in knowledge, energy, and perseverance,
rather above than below the average level of the population of the mother country. The aboriginal peasantry, on the
contrary, were in an almost savage state. They never worked till they felt the sting of hunger. They were content with
accommodation inferior to that which, in happier countries, was provided for domestic cattle. Already the potato, a
root which can be cultivated with scarcely any art, industry, or capital, and which cannot be long stored, had become
the food of the common people. 151 From a people so fed
diligence and forethought were not to be expected. Even within a few miles of Dublin, the traveller, on a soil the
richest and most verdant in the world, saw with disgust the miserable burrows out of which squalid and half naked
barbarians stared wildly at him as he passed. 152

The aboriginal aristocracy retained in no common measure the pride of birth, but had lost the influence which is
derived from wealth and power. Their lands had been divided by Cromwell among his followers. A portion, indeed, of the
vast territory which he had confiscated had, after the restoration of the House of Stuart, been given back to the
ancient proprietors. But much the greater part was still held by English emigrants under the guarantee of an Act of
Parliament. This act had been in force a quarter of a century; and under it mortgages, settlements, sales, and leases
without number had been made. The old Irish gentry were scattered over the whole world. Descendants of Milesian
chieftains swarmed in all the courts and camps of the Continent. Those despoiled proprietors who still remained in
their native land, brooded gloomily over their losses, pined for the opulence and dignity of which they had been
deprived, and cherished wild hopes of another revolution. A person of this class was described by his countrymen as a
gentleman who would be rich if justice were done, as a gentleman who had a fine estate if he could only get it.
153 He seldom betook himself to any peaceful calling.
Trade, indeed, he thought a far more disgraceful resource than marauding. Sometimes he turned freebooter. Sometimes he
contrived, in defiance of the law, to live by coshering, that is to say, by quartering himself on the old tenants of
his family, who, wretched as was their own condition, could not refuse a portion of their pittance to one whom they
still regarded as their rightful lord. 154 The native
gentleman who had been so fortunate as to keep or to regain some of his land too often lived like the petty prince of a
savage tribe, and indemnified himself for the humiliations which the dominant race made him suffer by governing his
vassals despotically, by keeping a rude haram, and by maddening or stupefying himself daily with strong drink.
155 Politically he was insignificant. No statute, indeed,
excluded him from the House of Commons: but he had almost as little chance of obtaining a seat there as a man of colour
has of being chosen a Senator of the United States. In fact only one Papist had been returned to the Irish Parliament
since the Restoration. The whole legislative and executive power was in the hands of the colonists; and the ascendency
of the ruling caste was upheld by a standing army of seven thousand men, on whose zeal for what was called the English
interest full reliance could be placed. 156

On a close scrutiny it would have been found that neither the Irishry nor the Englishry formed a perfectly
homogeneous body. The distinction between those Irish who were of Celtic blood, and those Irish who sprang from the
followers of Strong-bow and De Burgh, was not altogether effaced. The Fitzes sometimes permitted themselves to speak
with scorn of the Os and Macs; and the Os and Macs sometimes repaid that scorn with aversion. In the preceding
generation one of the most powerful of the O’Neills refused to pay any mark of respect to a Roman Catholic gentleman of
old Norman descent. “They say that the family has been here four hundred years. No matter. I hate the clown as if he
had come yesterday.” 157 It seems, however, that such
feelings were rare, and that the feud which had long raged between the aboriginal Celts and the degenerate English had
nearly given place to the fiercer feud which separated both races from the modern and Protestant colony.

The colony had its own internal disputes, both national and religious. The majority was English; but a large
minority came from the south of Scotland. One half of the settlers belonged to the Established Church; the other half
were Dissenters. But in Ireland Scot and Southron were strongly bound together by their common Saxon origin. Churchman
and Presbyterian were strongly bound together by their common Protestantism. All the colonists had a common language
and a common pecuniary interest. They were surrounded by common enemies, and could be safe only by means of common
precautions and exertions. The few penal laws, therefore, which had been made in Ireland against Protestant
Nonconformists, were a dead letter. 158 The bigotry of the
most sturdy churchman would not bear exportation across St. George’s Channel. As soon as the Cavalier arrived in
Ireland, and found that, without the hearty and courageous assistance of his Puritan neighbours, he and all his family
would run imminent risk of being murdered by Popish marauders, his hatred of Puritanism, in spite of himself, began to
languish and die away. It was remarked by eminent men of both parties that a Protestant who, in Ireland, was called a
high Tory would in England have been considered as a moderate Whig. 159

The Protestant Nonconformists, on their side, endured, with more patience than could have been expected, the sight
of the most absurd ecclesiastical establishment that the world has ever seen. Four Archbishops and eighteen Bishops
were employed in looking after about a fifth part of the number of churchmen who inhabited the single diocese of
London. Of the parochial clergy a large proportion were pluralists and resided at a distance from their cures. There
were some who drew from their benefices incomes of little less than a thousand a year, without ever performing any
spiritual function. Yet this monstrous institution was much less disliked by the Puritans settled in Ireland than the
Church of England by the English sectaries. For in Ireland religious divisions were subordinate to national divisions;
and the Presbyterian, while, as a theologian, he could not but condemn the established hierarchy, yet looked on that
hierarchy with a sort of complacency when he considered it as a sumptuous and ostentatious trophy of the victory
achieved by the great race from which he sprang. 160

Thus the grievances of the Irish Roman Catholic had hardly anything in common with the grievances of the English
Roman Catholic. The Roman Catholic of Lancashire or Staffordshire had only to turn Protestant; and he was at once, in
all respects, on a level with his neighbours: but, if the Roman Catholics of Munster and Connaught had turned
Protestants, they would still have continued to be a subject people. Whatever evils the Roman Catholic suffered in
England were the effects of harsh legislation, and might have been remedied by a more liberal legislation. But between
the two populations which inhabited Ireland there was an inequality which legislation had not caused and could not
remove. The dominion which one of those populations exercised over the other was the dominion of wealth over poverty,
of knowledge over ignorance, of civilised over uncivilised man.

James himself seemed, at the commencement of his reign, to be perfectly aware of these truths. The distractions of
Ireland, he said, arose, not from the differences between the Catholics and the Protestants, but from the differences
between the Irish and the English. 161 The consequences
which he should have drawn from this just proposition were sufficiently obvious; but unhappily for himself and for
Ireland he failed to perceive them.

If only national animosity could be allayed, there could be little doubt that religious animosity, not being kept
alive, as in England, by cruel penal acts and stringent test acts, would of itself fade away. To allay a national
animosity such as that which the two races inhabiting Ireland felt for each other could not be the work of a few years.
Yet it was a work to which a wise and good prince might have contributed much; and James would have undertaken that
work with advantages such as none of his predecessors or successors possessed. At once an Englishman and a Roman
Catholic, he belonged half to the ruling and half to the subject caste, and was therefore peculiarly qualified to be a
mediator between them. Nor is it difficult to trace the course which he ought to have pursued. He ought to have
determined that the existing settlement of landed property should be inviolable; and he ought to have announced that
determination in such a manner as effectually to quiet the anxiety of the new proprietors, and to extinguish any wild
hopes which the old proprietors might entertain. Whether, in the great transfer of estates, injustice had or had not
been committed, was immaterial. That transfer, just or unjust, had taken place so long ago, that to reverse it would be
to unfix the foundations of society. There must be a time of limitation to all rights. After thirty-five years of
actual possession, after twenty-five years of possession solemnly guaranteed by statute, after innumerable leases and
releases, mortgages and devises, it was too late to search for flaws in titles. Nevertheless something might have been
done to heal the lacerated feelings and to raise the fallen fortunes of the Irish gentry. The colonists were in a
thriving condition. They had greatly improved their property by building, planting, and fencing. The rents had almost
doubled within a few years; trade was brisk; and the revenue, amounting to about three hundred thousand pounds a year,
more than defrayed all the charges of the local government, and afforded a surplus which was remitted to England. There
was no doubt that the next Parliament which should meet at Dublin, though representing almost exclusively the English
interest, would, in return for the King’s promise to maintain that interest in all its legal rights, willingly grant to
him a very considerable sum for the purpose of indemnifying, at least in part, such native families as had been
wrongfully despoiled. It was thus that in our own time the French government put an end to the disputes engendered by
the most extensive confiscation that ever took place in Europe. And thus, if James had been guided by the advice of his
most loyal Protestant counsellors, he would have at least greatly mitigated one of the chief evils which afflicted
Ireland. 162

Having done this, he should have laboured to reconcile the hostile races to each other by impartially protecting the
rights and restraining the excesses of both. He should have punished with equal severity the native who indulged in the
license of barbarism, and the colonist who abused the strength of civilisation. As far as the legitimate authority of
the crown extended — and in Ireland it extended far — no man who was qualified for office by integrity and ability
should have been considered as disqualified by extraction or by creed for any public trust. It is probable that a Roman
Catholic King, with an ample revenue absolutely at his disposal, would, without much difficulty, have secured the
cooperation of the Roman Catholic prelates and priests in the great work of reconciliation. Much, however, must still
have been left to the healing influence of time. The native race would still have had to learn from the colonists
industry and forethought, the arts of life, and the language of England. There could not be equality between men who
lived in houses and men who lived in sties, between men who were fed on bread and men who were fed on potatoes, between
men who spoke the noble tongue of great philosophers and poets and men who, with a perverted pride, boasted that they
could not writhe their mouths into chattering such a jargon as that in which the Advancement of Learning and the
Paradise Lost were written. 163 Yet it is not unreasonable
to believe that, if the gentle policy which has been described had been steadily followed by the government, all
distinctions would gradually have been effaced, and that there would now have been no more trace of the hostility which
has been the curse of Ireland than there is of the equally deadly hostility which once raged between the Saxons and the
Normans in England.

Unhappily James, instead of becoming a mediator became the fiercest and most reckless of partisans. Instead of
allaying the animosity of the two populations, he inflamed it to a height before unknown. He determined to reverse
their relative position, and to put the Protestant colonists under the feet of the Popish Celts. To be of the
established religion, to be of the English blood, was, in his view, a disqualification for civil and military
employment. He meditated the design of again confiscating and again portioning out the soil of half the island, and
showed his inclination so clearly that one class was soon agitated by terrors which he afterwards vainly wished to
soothe, and the other by hopes which he afterwards vainly wished to restrain. But this was the smallest part of his
guilt and madness. He deliberately resolved, not merely to give to the aboriginal inhabitants of Ireland the entire
possession of their own country, but also to use them as his instruments for setting up arbitrary government in
England. The event was such as might have been foreseen. The colonists turned to bay with the stubborn hardihood of
their race. The mother country justly regarded their cause as her own. Then came a desperate struggle for a tremendous
stake. Everything dear to nations was wagered on both sides: nor can we justly blame either the Irishman or the
Englishman for obeying, in that extremity, the law of self-preservation. The contest was terrible, but short. The
weaker went down. His fate was cruel; and yet for the cruelty with which he was treated there was, not indeed a
defence, but an excuse: for, though he suffered all that tyranny could inflict, he suffered nothing that he would not
himself have inflicted. The effect of the insane attempt to subjugate England by means of Ireland was that the Irish
became hewers of wood and drawers of water to the English. The old proprietors, by their effort to recover what they
had lost, lost the greater part of what they had retained. The momentary ascendency of Popery produced such a series of
barbarous laws against Popery as made the statute book of Ireland a proverb of infamy throughout Christendom. Such were
the bitter fruits of the policy of James.

We have seen that one of his first acts, after he became King, was to recall Ormond from Ireland. Ormond was the
head of the English interest in that kingdom: he was firmly attached to the Protestant religion; and his power far
exceeded that of an ordinary Lord Lieutenant, first, because he was in rank and wealth the greatest of the colonists,
and, secondly, because he was not only the chief of the civil administration, but also commander of the forces. The
King was not at that time disposed to commit the government wholly to Irish hands. He had indeed been heard to say that
a native viceroy would soon become an independent sovereign.164 For the present, therefore, he determined to divide the power which Ormond had possessed, to
entrust the civil administration to an English and Protestant Lord Lieutenant, and to give the command of the army to
an Irish and Roman Catholic General. The Lord Lieutenant was Clarendon; the General was Tyrconnel.

Tyrconnel sprang, as has already been said, from one of those degenerate families of the Pale which were popularly
classed with the aboriginal population of Ireland. He sometimes, indeed, in his rants, talked with Norman haughtiness
of the Celtic barbarians: 165 but all his sympathies were
really with the natives. The Protestant colonists he hated; and they returned his hatred. Clarendon’s inclinations were
very different: but he was, from temper, interest, and principle, an obsequious courtier. His spirit was mean; his
circumstances were embarrassed; and his mind had been deeply imbued with the political doctrines which the Church of
England had in that age too assiduously taught. His abilities, however, were not contemptible; and, under a good King,
he would probably have been a respectable viceroy.

About three quarters of a year elapsed between the recall of Ormond and the arrival of Clarendon at Dublin. During
that interval the King was represented by a board of Lords Justices: but the military administration was in Tyrconnel’s
hands. Already the designs of the court began gradually to unfold themselves. A royal order came from Whitehall for
disarming the population. This order Tyrconnel strictly executed as respected the English. Though the country was
infested by predatory bands, a Protestant gentleman could scarcely obtain permission to keep a brace of pistols. The
native peasantry, on the other hand, were suffered to retain their weapons. 166 The joy of the colonists was therefore great, when at length, in December 1685, Tyrconnel was
summoned to London and Clarendon set out for Dublin. But it soon appeared that the government was really directed, not
at Dublin, but in London. Every mail that crossed St. George’s Channel brought tidings of the boundless influence which
Tyrconnel exercised on Irish affairs. It was said that he was to be a Marquess, that he was to be a Duke, that he was
to have the command of the forces, that he was to be entrusted with the task of remodelling the army and the courts of
justice. 167 Clarendon was bitterly mortified at finding
himself a subordinate in ember of that administration of which he had expected to be the head. He complained that
whatever he did was misrepresented by his detractors, and that the gravest resolutions touching the country which he
governed were adopted at Westminster, made known to the public, discussed at coffee houses, communicated in hundreds of
private letters, some weeks before one hint had been given to the Lord Lieutenant. His own personal dignity, he said,
mattered little: but it was no light thing that the representative of the majesty of the throne should be made an
object of contempt to the people. 168 Panic spread fast
among the English when they found that the viceroy, their fellow countryman and fellow Protestant, was unable to extend
to them the protection which they had expected from him. They began to know by bitter experience what it is to be a
subject caste. They were harassed by the natives with accusations of treason and sedition. This Protestant had
corresponded with Monmouth: that Protestant had said something disrespectful of the King four or five years ago, when
the Exclusion Bill was under discussion; and the evidence of the most infamous of mankind was ready to substantiate
every charge. The Lord Lieutenant expressed his apprehension that, if these practices were not stopped, there would
soon be at Dublin a reign of terror similar to that which he had seen in London, when every man held his life and
honour at the mercy of Oates and Bedloe. 169

Clarendon was soon informed, by a concise despatch from Sunderland, that it had been resolved to make without delay
a complete change in both the civil and the military government of Ireland, and to bring a large number of Roman
Catholics instantly into office. His Majesty, it was most ungraciously added, had taken counsel on these matters with
persons more competent to advise him than his inexperienced Lord Lieutenant could possibly be. 170

Before this letter reached the viceroy the intelligence which it contained had, through many channels, arrived in
Ireland. The terror of the colonists was extreme. Outnumbered as they were by the native population, their condition
would be pitiable indeed if the native population were to be armed against them with the whole power of the state; and
nothing less than this was threatened. The English inhabitants of Dublin passed each other in the streets with dejected
looks. On the Exchange business was suspended. Landowners hastened to sell their estates for whatever could be got, and
to remit the purchase money to England. Traders began to call in their debts and to make preparations for retiring from
business. The alarm soon affected the revenue. 171
Clarendon attempted to inspire the dismayed settlers with a confidence which he was himself far from feeling. He
assured them that their property would be held sacred, and that, to his certain knowledge, the King was fully
determined to maintain the act of settlement which guaranteed their right to the soil. But his letters to England were
in a very different strain. He ventured even to expostulate with the King, and, without blaming His Majesty’s intention
of employing Roman Catholics, expressed a strong opinion that the Roman Catholics who might be employed should be
Englishmen. 172

The reply of James was dry and cold. He declared that he had no intention of depriving the English colonists of
their land, but that he regarded a large portion of them as his enemies, and that, since he consented to leave so much
property in the hands of his enemies, it was the more necessary that the civil and military administration should be in
the hands of his friends. 173

Accordingly several Roman Catholics were sworn of the Privy Council; and orders were sent to corporations to admit
Roman Catholics to municipal advantages. 174 Many officers
of the army were arbitrarily deprived of their commissions and of their bread. It was to no purpose that the Lord
Lieutenant pleaded the cause of some whom he knew to be good soldiers and loyal subjects. Among them were old
Cavaliers, who had fought bravely for monarchy, and who bore the marks of honourable wounds. Their places were supplied
by men who had no recommendation but their religion. Of the new Captains and Lieutenants, it was said, some had been
cow-herds, some footmen, some noted marauders; some had been so used to wear brogues that they stumbled and shuffled
about strangely in their military jack boots. Not a few of the officers who were discarded took refuge in the Dutch
service, and enjoyed, four years later, the pleasure of driving their successors before them in ignominious rout
through the waters of the Boyne. 175

The distress and alarm of Clarendon were increased by news which reached him through private channels. Without his
approbation, without his knowledge, preparations were making for arming and drilling the whole Celtic population of the
country of which he was the nominal governor. Tyrconnel from London directed the design; and the prelates of his Church
were his agents. Every priest had been instructed to prepare an exact list of all his male parishioners capable of
bearing arms, and to forward it to his Bishop. 176

It had already been rumoured that Tyrconnel would soon return to Dublin armed with extraordinary and independent
powers; and the rumour gathered strength daily. The Lord Lieutenant, whom no insult could drive to resign the pomp and
emoluments of his place, declared that he should submit cheerfully to the royal pleasure, and approve himself in all
things a faithful and obedient subject. He had never, he said, in his life, had any difference with Tyrconnel, and he
trusted that no difference would now arise. 177 Clarendon
appears not to have recollected that there had once been a plot to ruin the fame of his innocent sister, and that in
that plot Tyrconnel had borne a chief part. This is not exactly one of the injuries which high spirited men most
readily pardon. But, in the wicked court where the Hydes had long been pushing their fortunes, such injuries were
easily forgiven and forgotten, not from magnanimity or Christian charity, but from mere baseness and want of moral
sensibility. In June 1686, Tyrconnel came. His commission authorised him only to command the troops, but he brought
with him royal instructions touching all parts of the administration, and at once took the real government of the
island into his own hands. On the day after his arrival he explicitly said that commissions must be largely given to
Roman Catholic officers, and that room must be made for them by dismissing more Protestants. He pushed on the
remodelling of the army eagerly and indefatigably. It was indeed the only part of the functions of a Commander in Chief
which he was competent to perform; for, though courageous in brawls and duels, he knew nothing of military duty. At the
very first review which he held, it was evident to all who were near to him that he did not know how to draw up a
regiment. 178 To turn Englishmen out and to put Irishmen in
was, in his view, the beginning and the end of the administration of war. He had the insolence to cashier the Captain
of the Lord Lieutenant’s own Body Guard: nor was Clarendon aware of what had happened till he saw a Roman Catholic,
whose face was quite unknown to him, escorting the state coach. 179 The change was not confined to the officers alone. The ranks were completely broken up and
recomposed. Four or five hundred soldiers were turned out of a single regiment chiefly on the ground that they were
below the proper stature. Yet the most unpractised eye at once perceived that they were taller and better made men than
their successors, whose wild and squalid appearance disgusted the beholders. 180 Orders were given to the new officers that no man of the Protestant religion was to be
suffered to enlist. The recruiting parties, instead of beating their drums for volunteers at fairs and markets, as had
been the old practice, repaired to places to which the Roman Catholics were in the habit of making pilgrimages for
purposes of devotion. In a few weeks the General had introduced more than two thousand natives into the ranks; and the
people about him confidently affirmed that by Christmas day not a man of English race would be left in the whole army.
181

On all questions which arose in the Privy Council, Tyrconnel showed similar violence and partiality. John Keating,
Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, a man distinguished by ability, integrity, and loyalty, represented with great
mildness that perfect equality was all that the General could reasonably ask for his own Church. The King, he said,
evidently meant that no man fit for public trust should be excluded because he was a Roman Catholic, and that no man
unfit for public trust should be admitted because he was a Protestant. Tyrconnel immediately began to curse and swear.
“I do not know what to say to that; I would have all Catholics in.” 182 The most judicious Irishmen of his own religious persuasion were dismayed at his rashness, and
ventured to remonstrate with him; but he drove them from him with imprecations.183 His brutality was such that many thought him mad. Yet it was less strange than the shameless
volubility with which he uttered falsehoods. He had long before earned the nickname of Lying Dick Talbot; and, at
Whitehall, any wild fiction was commonly designated as one of Dick Talbot’s truths. He now daily proved that he was
well entitled to this unenviable reputation. Indeed in him mendacity was almost a disease. He would, after giving
orders for the dismission of English officers, take them into his closet, assure them of his confidence and friendship,
and implore heaven to confound him, sink him, blast him, if he did not take good care of their interests. Sometimes
those to whom he had thus perjured himself learned, before the day closed, that he had cashiered them. 184

On his arrival, though he swore savagely at the Act of Settlement, and called the English interest a foul thing, a
roguish thing, and a damned thing, he yet intended to be convinced that the distribution of property could not, after
the lapse of so many years, be altered. 185 But, when he
had been a few weeks at Dublin, his language changed. He began to harangue vehemently at the Council board on the
necessity of giving back the land to the old owners. He had not, however, as yet, obtained his master’s sanction to
this fatal project. National feeling still struggled feebly against superstition in the mind of James. He was an
Englishman: he was an English King; and he could not, without some misgivings, consent to the destruction of the
greatest colony that England had ever planted. The English Roman Catholics with whom he was in the habit of taking
counsel were almost unanimous in favour of the Act of Settlement. Not only the honest and moderate Powis, but the
dissolute and headstrong Dover, gave judicious and patriotic advice. Tyrconnel could hardly hope to counteract at a
distance the effect which such advice must produce on the royal mind. He determined to plead the cause of his caste in
person; and accordingly he set out, at the end of August, for England.

His presence and his absence were equally dreaded by the Lord Lieutenant. It was, indeed, painful to be daily
browbeaten by an enemy: but it was not less painful to know that an enemy was daily breathing calumny and evil counsel
in the royal ear. Clarendon was overwhelmed by manifold vexations. He made a progress through the country, and found
that he was everywhere treated by the Irish population with contempt. The Roman Catholic priests exhorted their
congregations to withhold from him all marks of honour. The native gentry, instead of coming to pay their respects to
him, remained at their houses. The native peasantry everywhere sang Erse songs in praise of Tyrconnel, who would, they
doubted not, soon reappear to complete the humiliation of their oppressors. 186 The viceroy had scarcely returned to Dublin, from his unsatisfactory tour, when he received
letters which informed him that he had incurred the King’s serious displeasure. His Majesty — so these letters ran —
expected his servants not only to do what he commanded, but to do it from the heart, and with a cheerful countenance.
The Lord Lieutenant had not, indeed, refused to cooperate in the reform of the army and of the civil administration;
but his cooperation had been reluctant and perfunctory: his looks had betrayed his feelings; and everybody saw that he
disapproved of the policy which he was employed to carry into effect. 187 In great anguish of mind he wrote to defend himself; but he was sternly told that his defence
was not satisfactory. He then, in the most abject terms, declared that he would not attempt to justify himself, that he
acquiesced in the royal judgment, be it what it might, that he prostrated himself in the dust, that he implored pardon,
that of all penitents he was the most sincere, that he should think it glorious to die in his Sovereign’s cause, but
found it impossible to live under his Sovereign’s displeasure. Nor was this mere interested hypocrisy, but, at least in
part, unaffected slavishness and poverty of spirit; for in confidential letters, not meant for the royal eye, he
bemoaned himself to his family in the same strain. He was miserable; he was crushed; the wrath of the King was
insupportable; if that wrath could not be mitigated, life would not be worth having. 188 The poor man’s terror increased when he learned that it had been
determined at Whitehall to recall him, and to appoint, as his successor, his rival and calumniator, Tyrconnel.
189 Then for a time the prospect seemed to clear; the King
was in better humour; and during a few days Clarendon flattered himself that his brother’s intercession had prevailed,
and that the crisis was passed. 190

In truth the crisis was only beginning. While Clarendon was trying to lean on Rochester, Rochester was unable longer
to support himself. As in Ireland the elder brother, though retaining the guard of honour, the sword of state, and the
title of Excellency, had really been superseded by the Commander of the Forces, so in England, the younger brother,
though holding the white staff, and walking, by virtue of his high office, before the greatest hereditary nobles, was
fast sinking into a mere financial clerk. The Parliament was again prorogued to a distant day, in opposition to the
Treasurer’s known wishes. He was not even told that there was to be another prorogation, but was left to learn the news
from the Gazette. The real direction of affairs had passed to the cabal which dined with Sunderland on Fridays. The
cabinet met only to hear the despatches from foreign courts read: nor did those despatches contain anything which was
not known on the Royal Exchange; for all the English Envoys had received orders to put into the official letters only
the common talk of antechambers, and to reserve important secrets for private communications which were addressed to
James himself, to Sunderland, or to Petre. 191 Yet the
victorious faction was not content. The King was assured by those whom he most trusted that the obstinacy with which
the nation opposed his designs was really to be imputed to Rochester. How could the people believe that their Sovereign
was unalterably resolved to persevere in the course on which he had entered, when they saw at his right hand,
ostensibly first in power and trust among his counsellors, a man who notoriously regarded that course with strong
disapprobation? Every step which had been taken with the object of humbling the Church of England, and of elevating the
Church of Rome, had been opposed by the Treasurer. True it was that, when he had found opposition vain, he had gloomily
submitted, nay, that he had sometimes even assisted in carrying into effect the very plans against which he had most
earnestly contended. True it was that, though he disliked the Ecclesiastical Commission, he had consented to be a
Commissioner. True it was that he had, while declaring that he could see nothing blamable in the conduct of the Bishop
of London, voted sullenly and reluctantly for the sentence of deprivation. But this was not enough. A prince, engaged
in an enterprise so important and arduous as that on which James was bent, had a right to expect from his first
minister, not unwilling and ungracious acquiescence, but zealous and strenuous cooperation. While such advice was daily
given to James by those in whom he reposed confidence, he received, by the penny post, many anonymous letters filled
with calumnies against the Lord Treasurer. This mode of attack had been contrived by Tyrconnel, and was in perfect
harmony with every part of his infamous life. 192

The King hesitated. He seems, indeed, to have really regarded his brother in law with personal kindness, the effect
of near affinity, of long and familiar intercourse, and of many mutual good offices. It seemed probable that, as long
as Rochester continued to submit himself, though tardily and with murmurs, to the royal pleasure, he would continue to
be in name prime minister. Sunderland, therefore, with exquisite cunning, suggested to his master the propriety of
asking the only proof of obedience which it was quite certain that Rochester never would give. At present — such was
the language of the artful Secretary — it was impossible to consult with the first of the King’s servants respecting
the object nearest to the King’s heart. It was lamentable to think that religious prejudices should, at such a
conjuncture, deprive the government of such valuable assistance. Perhaps those prejudices might not prove
insurmountable. Then the deceiver whispered that, to his knowledge, Rochester had of late had some misgivings about the
points in dispute between the Protestants and Catholics. 193 This was enough. The King eagerly caught at the hint. He began to flatter himself that he
might at once escape from the disagreeable necessity of removing a friend, and secure an able coadjutor for the great
work which was in progress. He was also elated by the hope that he might have the merit and the glory of saving a
fellow creature from perdition. He seems, indeed, about this time, to have been seized with an unusually violent fit of
zeal for his religion; and this is the more remarkable, because he had just relapsed, after a short interval of
selfrestraint, into debauchery which all Christian divines condemn as sinful, and which, in an elderly man married to
an agreeable young wife, is regarded even by people of the world as disreputable. Lady Dorchester had returned from
Dublin, and was again the King’s mistress. Her return was politically of no importance. She had learned by experience
the folly of attempting to save her lover from the destruction to which he was running headlong. She therefore suffered
the Jesuits to guide his political conduct and they, in return, suffered her to wheedle him out of money; She was,
however, only one of several abandoned women who at this time shared, with his beloved Church, the dominion over his
mind. 194 He seems to have determined to make some amends
for neglecting the welfare of his own soul by taking care of the souls of others. He set himself, therefore, to labour,
with real good will, but with the good will of a coarse, stern, and arbitrary mind, for the conversion of his kinsman.
Every audience which the Treasurer obtained was spent in arguments about the authority of the Church and the worship of
images. Rochester was firmly resolved not to abjure his religion; but he had no scruple about employing in selfdefence
artifices as discreditable as those which had been used against him. He affected to speak like a man whose mind was not
made up, professed himself desirous to be enlightened if he was in error, borrowed Popish books, and listened with
civility to Popish divines. He had several interviews with Leyburn, the Vicar Apostolic, with Godden, the chaplain and
almoner of the Queen Dowager, and with Bonaventure Giffard, a theologian trained to polemics in the schools of Douay.
It was agreed that there should be a formal disputation between these doctors and some Protestant clergymen. The King
told Rochester to choose any ministers of the Established Church, with two exceptions. The proscribed persons were
Tillotson and Stillingfleet. Tillotson, the most popular preacher of that age, and in manners the most inoffensive of
men, had been much connected with some leading Whigs; and Stillingfleet, who was renowned as a consummate master of all
the weapons of controversy, had given still deeper offence by publishing an answer to the papers which had been found
in the strong box of Charles the Second. Rochester took the two royal chaplains who happened to be in waiting. One of
them was Simon Patrick, whose commentaries on the Bible still form a part of theological libraries; the other was Jane,
a vehement Tory, who had assisted in drawing up that decree by which the University of Oxford had solemnly adopted the
worst follies of Filmer. The conference took place at Whitehall on the thirtieth of November. Rochester, who did not
wish it to be known that he had even consented to hear the arguments of Popish priests, stipulated for secrecy. No
auditor was suffered to be present except the King. The subject discussed was the real presence. The Roman Catholic
divines took on themselves the burden of the proof. Patrick and Jane said little; nor was it necessary that they should
say much; for the Earl himself undertook to defend the doctrine of his Church, and, as was his habit, soon warmed with
conflict, lost his temper, and asked with great vehemence whether it was expected that he should change his religion on
such frivolous grounds. Then he remembered how much he was risking, began again to dissemble, complimented the
disputants on their skill and learning, and asked time to consider what had been said. 195

Slow as James was, he could not but see that this was mere trifling. He told Barillon that Rochester’s language was
not that of a man honestly desirous of arriving at the truth. Still the King did not like to propose directly to his
brother in law the simple choice, apostasy or dismissal: but, three days after the conference, Barillon waited on the
Treasurer, and, with much circumlocution and many expressions of friendly concern, broke the unpleasant truth. “Do you
mean,” said Rochester, bewildered by the involved and ceremonious phrases in which the intimation was made, “that, if I
do not turn Catholic, the consequence will be that I shall lose my place?” “I say nothing about consequences,” answered
the wary diplomatist. “I only come as a friend to express a hope that you will take care to keep your place.” “But
surely,” said Rochester, “the plain meaning of all this is that I must turn Catholic or go out.” He put many questions
for the purpose of ascertaining whether the communication was made by authority, but could extort only vague and
mysterious replies. At last, affecting a confidence which he was far from feeling, he declared that Barillon must have
been imposed upon by idle or malicious reports. “I tell you,” he said, “that the King will not dismiss me, and I will
not resign. I know him: he knows me; and I fear nobody.” The Frenchman answered that he was charmed, that he was
ravished to hear it, and that his only motive for interfering was a sincere anxiety for the prosperity and dignity of
his excellent friend the Treasurer. And thus the two statesmen parted, each flattering himself that he had duped the
other. 196

Meanwhile, in spite of all injunctions of secrecy, the news that the Lord Treasurer had consented to be instructed
in the doctrines of Popery had spread fast through London. Patrick and Jane had been seen going in at that mysterious
door which led to Chiffinch’s apartments. Some Roman Catholics about the court had, indiscreetly or artfully, told all,
and more than all, that they knew. The Tory churchmen waited anxiously for fuller information. They were mortified to
think that their leader should even have pretended to waver in his opinion; but they could not believe that he would
stoop to be a renegade. The unfortunate minister, tortured at once by his fierce passions and his low desires, annoyed
by the censures of the public, annoyed by the hints which he had received from Barillon, afraid of losing character,
afraid of losing office, repaired to the royal closet. He was determined to keep his place, if it could be kept by any
villany but one. He would pretend to be shaken in his religious opinions, and to be half a convert: he would promise to
give strenuous support to that policy which he had hitherto opposed: but, if he were driven to extremity, he would
refuse to change his religion. He began, therefore, by telling the King that the business in which His Majesty took so
much interest was not sleeping, that Jane and Giffard were engaged in consulting books on the points in dispute between
the Churches, and that, when these researches were over, it would be desirable to have another conference. Then he
complained bitterly that all the town was apprised of what ought to have been carefully concealed, and that some
persons, who, from their station, might be supposed to be well informed, reported strange things as to the royal
intentions. “It is whispered,” he said, “that, if I do not do as your Majesty would have me, I shall not be suffered to
continue in my present station.” The King said, with some general expressions of kindness, that it was difficult to
prevent people from talking, and that loose reports were not to be regarded. These vague phrases were not likely to
quiet the perturbed mind of the minister. His agitation became violent, and he began to plead for his place as if he
had been pleading for his life. “Your Majesty sees that I do all in my power to obey you. Indeed I will do all that I
can to obey you in every thing. I will serve you in your own way. Nay,” he cried, in an agony of baseness, “I will do
what I can to believe as you would have me. But do not let me be told, while I am trying to bring my mind to this,
that, if I find it impossible to comply, I must lose all. For I must needs tell your Majesty that there are other
considerations.” “Oh, you must needs,” exclaimed the King, with an oath. For a single word of honest and manly sound,
escaping in the midst of all this abject supplication, was sufficient to move his anger. “I hope, sir,” said poor
Rochester, “that I do not offend you. Surely your Majesty could not think well of me if I did not say so.” The King
recollected himself protested that he was not offended, and advised the Treasurer to disregard idle rumours, and to
confer again with Jane and Giffard. 197

After this conversation, a fortnight elapsed before the decisive blow fell. That fortnight Rochester passed in
intriguing and imploring. He attempted to interest in his favour those Roman Catholics who had the greatest influence
at court. He could not, he said, renounce his own religion: but, with that single reservation, he would do all that
they could desire. Indeed, if he might only keep his place, they should find that he could be more useful to them as a
Protestant than as one of their own communion. 198 His
wife, who was on a sick bed, had already, it was said, solicited the honour of a visit from the much injured Queen, and
had attempted to work on Her Majesty’s feelings of compassion. 199 But the Hydes abased themselves in vain. Petre regarded them with peculiar malevolence, and
was bent on their ruin.200 On the evening of the
seventeenth of December the Earl was called into the royal closet. James was unusually discomposed, and even shed
tears. The occasion, indeed, could not but call up some recollections which might well soften even a hard heart. He
expressed his regret that his duty made it impossible for him to indulge his private partialities. It was absolutely
necessary, he said, that those who had the chief direction of his affairs should partake his opinions and feelings. He
owned that he had very great personal obligations to Rochester, and that no fault could be found with the way in which
the financial business had lately been done: but the office of Lord Treasurer was of such high importance that, in
general, it ought not to be entrusted to a single person, and could not safely be entrusted by a Roman Catholic King to
a person zealous for the Church of England. “Think better of it, my Lord,” he continued. “Read again the papers from my
brother’s box. I will give you a little more time for consideration, if you desire it.” Rochester saw that all was
over, and that the wisest course left to him was to make his retreat with as much money and as much credit as possible.
He succeeded in both objects. He obtained a pension of four thousand pounds a year for two lives on the post office. He
had made great sums out of the estates of traitors, and carried with him in particular Grey’s bond for forty thousand
pounds, and a grant of all the estate which the crown had in Grey’s extensive property. 201 No person had ever quitted office on terms so advantageous. To the
applause of the sincere friends of the Established Church Rochester had, indeed, very slender claims. To save his place
he had sate in that tribunal which had been illegally created for the purpose of persecuting her. To save his place he
had given a dishonest vote for degrading one of her most eminent ministers, had affected to doubt her orthodoxy, had
listened with the outward show of docility to teachers who called her schismatical and heretical, and had offered to
cooperate strenuously with her deadliest enemies in their designs against her. The highest praise to which he was
entitled was this, that he had shrunk from the exceeding wickedness and baseness of publicly abjuring, for lucre, the
religion in which he had been brought up, which he believed to be true, and of which he had long made an ostentatious
profession. Yet he was extolled by the great body of Churchmen as if he had been the bravest and purest of martyrs. The
Old and New Testaments, the Martyrologies of Eusebius and of Fox, were ransacked to find parallels for his heroic
piety. He was Daniel in the den of lions, Shadrach in the fiery furnace, Peter in the dungeon of Herod, Paul at the bar
of Nero, Ignatius in the amphitheatre, Latimer at the stake. Among the many facts which prove that the standard of
honour and virtue among the public men of that age was low, the admiration excited by Rochester’s constancy is,
perhaps, the most decisive.

In his fall he dragged down Clarendon. On the seventh of January 1687, the Gazette announced to the people of London
that the Treasury was put into commission. On the eighth arrived at Dublin a despatch formally signifying that in a
month Tyrconnel would assume the government of Ireland. It was not without great difficulty that this man had
surmounted the numerous impediments which stood in the way of his ambition. It was well known that the extermination of
the English colony in Ireland was the object on which his heart was set. He had, therefore, to overcome some scruples
in the royal mind. He had to surmount the opposition, not merely of all the Protestant members of the government, not
merely of the moderate and respectable heads of the Roman Catholic body, but even of several members of the jesuitical
cabal. 202 Sunderland shrank from the thought of an Irish
revolution, religious, political, and social. To the Queen Tyrconnel was personally an object of aversion. Powis was
therefore suggested as the man best qualified for the viceroyalty. He was of illustrious birth: he was a sincere Roman
Catholic: and yet he was generally allowed by candid Protestants to be an honest man and a good Englishman. All
opposition, however, yielded to Tyrconnel’s energy and cunning. He fawned, bullied, and bribed indefatigably. Petre’s
help was secured by flattery. Sunderland was plied at once with promises and menaces. An immense price was offered for
his support, no less than an annuity of five thousand pounds a year from Ireland, redeemable by payment of fifty
thousand pounds down. If this proposal were rejected, Tyrconnel threatened to let the King know that the Lord President
had, at the Friday dinners, described His Majesty as a fool who must be governed either by a woman or by a priest.
Sunderland, pale and trembling, offered to procure for Tyrconnel supreme military command, enormous appointments,
anything but the viceroyalty: but all compromise was rejected; and it was necessary to yield. Mary of Modena herself
was not free from suspicion of corruption. There was in London a renowned chain of pearls which was valued at ten
thousand pounds. It had belonged to Prince Rupert; and by him it had been left to Margaret Hughes, a courtesan who,
towards the close of his life, had exercised a boundless empire over him. Tyrconnel loudly boasted that with this chain
he had purchased the support of the Queen. There were those, however, who suspected that this story was one of Dick
Talbot’s truths, and that it had no more foundation than the calumnies which, twenty-six years before, he had invented
to blacken the fame of Anne Hyde. To the Roman Catholic courtiers generally he spoke of the uncertain tenure by which
they held offices, honours, and emoluments. The King might die tomorrow, and might leave them at the mercy of a hostile
government and a hostile rabble. But, if the old faith could be made dominant in Ireland, if the Protestant interest in
that country could be destroyed, there would still be, in the worst event, an asylum at hand to which they might
retreat, and where they might either negotiate or defend themselves with advantage. A Popish priest was hired with the
promise of the mitre of Waterford to preach at Saint James’s against the Act of Settlement; and his sermon, though
heard with deep disgust by the English part of the auditory, was not without its effect. The struggle which patriotism
had for a time maintained against bigotry in the royal mind was at an end. “There is work to be done in Ireland,” said
James, “which no Englishman will do.” 203

All obstacles were at length removed; and in February 1687, Tyrconnel began to rule his native country with the
power and appointments of Lord Lieutenant, but with the humbler title of Lord Deputy.

His arrival spread dismay through the whole English population. Clarendon was accompanied, or speedily followed,
across St. George’s Channel, by a large proportion of the most respectable inhabitants of Dublin, gentlemen, tradesmen,
and artificers. It was said that fifteen hundred families emigrated in a few days. The panic was not unreasonable. The
work of putting the colonists down under the feet of the natives went rapidly on. In a short time almost every Privy
Councillor, Judge, Sheriff, Mayor, Alderman, and Justice of the Peace was a Celt and a Roman Catholic. It seemed that
things would soon be ripe for a general election, and that a House of Commons bent on abrogating the Act of Settlement
would easily be assembled. 204 Those who had lately been
the lords of the island now cried out, in the bitterness of their souls, that they had become a prey and a
laughingstock to their own serfs and menials; that houses were burnt and cattle stolen with impunity; that the new
soldiers roamed the country, pillaging, insulting, ravishing, maiming, tossing one Protestant in a blanket, tying up
another by the hair and scourging him; that to appeal to the law was vain; that Irish Judges, Sheriffs, juries, and
witnesses were all in a league to save Irish criminals; and that, even without an Act of Parliament, the whole soil
would soon change hands; for that, in every action of ejectment tried under the administration of Tyrconnel, judgment
had been given for the native against the Englishman. 205

While Clarendon was at Dublin the Privy Seal had been in the hands of Commissioners. His friends hoped that it
would, on his return to London, be again delivered to him. But the King and the Jesuitical cabal had determined that
the disgrace of the Hydes should be complete. Lord Arundell of Wardour, a Roman Catholic, received the Privy Seal.
Bellasyse, a Roman Catholic, was made First Lord of the Treasury; and Dover, another Roman Catholic, had a seat at the
board. The appointment of a ruined gambler to such a trust would alone have sufficed to disgust the public. The
dissolute Etherege, who then resided at Ratisbon as English envoy, could not refrain from expressing, with a sneer, his
hope that his old boon companion, Dover, would keep the King’s money better than his own. In order that the finances
might not be ruined by incapable and inexperienced Papists, the obsequious, diligent and silent Godolphin was named a
Commissioner of the Treasury, but continued to be Chamberlain to the Queen. 206

The dismission of the two brothers is a great epoch in the reign of James. From that time it was clear that what he
really wanted was not liberty of conscience for the members of his own church, but liberty to persecute the members of
other churches. Pretending to abhor tests, he had himself imposed a test. He thought it hard, he thought it monstrous,
that able and loyal men should be excluded from the public service solely for being Roman Catholics. Yet he had himself
turned out of office a Treasurer, whom he admitted to be both loyal and able, solely for being a Protestant. The cry
was that a general proscription was at hand, and that every public functionary must make up his mind to lose his soul
or to lose his place. 207 Who indeed could hope to stand
where the Hydes had fallen? They were the brothers in law of the King, the uncles and natural guardians of his
children, his friends from early youth, his steady adherents in adversity and peril, his obsequious servants since he
had been on the throne. Their sole crime was their religion; and for this crime they had been discarded. In great
perturbation men began to look round for help; and soon all eyes were fixed on one whom a rare concurrence both of
personal qualities and of fortuitous circumstances pointed out as the deliverer.

2 Instructions headed, “For my son the Prince of Wales, 1692,” in the Stuart
Papers.]

3 “The Habeas Corpus,” said Johnson, the most bigoted of Tories, to Boswell, “is
the single advantage which our government has over that of other countries;” and T. B. Macaulay is the most bigoted of
Whigs in his own country, but left his whiggism at home when he went to India.]

4 See the Historical Records of Regiments, published under the supervision of the
Adjutant General.]

5 Barillon, Dec. 3/13 1685. He had studied the subject much. “C’est un detail,” he
says, “dont j’ai connoissance.” it appears from the Treasury Warrant Book that the charge of the army for the year 1687
was first of January at 623,104l. 9s. 11d.]

16 Commons’ Journals; Bramston’s Memoirs; James von Leeuwen to the States General,
Nov. 10/20 1685. Leeuwen was secretary of the Dutch embassy, and conducted the correspondence in the absence of
Citters. As to Clarges, see Burnet, i. 98.]

19 The most remarkable despatch bears date the 9/19th of November 1685, and will
be found in the Appendix to Mr. Fox’s History.]

20 Commons’ Journals, Nov. 12. 1685; Leeuwen, Nov.; Barillon, Nov. 16/26.; Sir
John Bramston’s Memoirs. The best report of the debates of the Commons in November, 1685, is one of which the history
is somewhat curious. There are two manuscript copies of it in the British Museum, Harl. 7187.; Lans. 253. In these
copies the names of the speakers are given at length. The author of the Life of James published in 1702 transcribed
this report, but gave only the initials, of the speakers. The editors of Chandler’s Debates and of the Parliamentary
History guessed from these initials at the names, and sometimes guessed wrong. They ascribe to Wailer a very remarkable
speech, which will hereafter be mentioned, and which was really made by Windham, member for Salisbury. It was with some
concern that I found myself forced to give up the belief that the last words uttered in public by Waller were so
honourable to him.]

23 The conflict of testimony on this subject is most extraordinary; and, after
long consideration, I must own that the balance seems to me to be exactly poised. In the Life of James (1702), the
motion is represented as a court motion. This account is confirmed by a remarkable passage in the Stuart Papers, which
was corrected by the Pretender himself. (Clarke’s Life of James the Second, ii. 55.) On the other hand, Reresby, who
was present, and Barillon, who ought to have been well informed, represent the motion as an opposition motion. The
Harleian and Lansdowne manuscripts differ in the single word on which the whole depends. Unfortunately Bramston was not
at the House that day. James Van Leeuwen mentions the motion and the division, but does not add a word which can throw
the smallest light on the state of parties. I must own myself unable to draw with confidence any inference from the
names of the tellers, Sir Joseph Williamson and Sir Francis Russell for the majority, and Lord Ancram and Sir Henry
Goodricke for the minority. I should have thought Lord Ancram likely to go with the court, and Sir Henry Goodricke
likely to go with the opposition.]

27 Lonsdale’s Memoirs. Burnet tells us (i. 667.) that a sharp debate about
elections took place in the House of Commons after Coke’s committal. It must therefore have been on the 19th of
November; for Coke was committed late on the 18th, and the Parliament was prorogued on the 20th. Burnet’s narrative is
confirmed by the Journals, from which it appears that several elections were under discussion on the 19th.]

29 Bramston’s Memoirs. Burnet is incorrect both as to the time when the remark was
made and as to the person who made it. In Halifax’s Letter to a Dissenter will be found a remarkable allusion to this
discussion.]

33 He was very easily moved to tears. “He could not,” says the author of the
Panegyric, “refrain from weeping on bold affronts.” And again “They talk of his hectoring and proud carriage; what
could be more humble than for a man in his great post to cry and sob?” In the answer to the Panegyric it is said that
“his having no command of his tears spoiled him for a hypocrite.”]

53 See his later correspondence, passim; St. Evremond, passim; Madame de Sevigne’s
Letters in the beginning of 1689. See also the instructions to Tallard after the peace of Ryswick, in the French
Archives.]

55 Adda, Nov. 16/26, Dec. 7/17. and Dec. 21/31. 1685. In these despatches Adda
gives strong reasons for compromising matters by abolishing the penal laws and leaving the test. He calls the quarrel
with the Parliament a “gran disgrazia.” He repeatedly hints that the King might, by a constitutional policy, have
obtained much for the Roman Catholics, and that the attempt to relieve them illegally is likely to bring great
calamities on them.]

68 The chief materials for the history of this intrigue are the despatches of
Barillon and Bonrepaux at the beginning of the year 1686. See Barillon, Jan 25./Feb 4. Feb. 1/11. Feb. 8/18. Feb.
19/29. and Bonrepaux under the first four Dates; Evelyn’s Diary, Jan. 29.; Reresby’s Memoirs; Burnet, i. 682.; Sheridan
MS.; Chaillot MS.; Adda’s Despatches, Jan 22/Feb 1. and Jan 29/Feb 8 1686. Adda writes like a pious, but weak and
ignorant man. He appears to have known nothing of James’s past life.]

69 The meditation hears date 1685/6. Bonrepaux, in his despatch of the same day,
says, “L’intrigue avoit ete conduite par Milord Rochester et sa femme. . . . Leur projet etoit de faire
gouverner le Roy d’Angleterre par la nouvelle comtesse. Ils s’etoient assures d’elle.” While Bonrepaux was writing
thus, Rochester was writing as follows: “Oh God, teach me so to number my days that I may apply my heart unto wisdom.
Teach me to number the days that I have spent in vanity and idleness, and teach me to number those that I have spent in
sin and wickedness. Oh God, teach me to number the days of my affliction too, and to give thanks for all that is come
to me from thy hand. Teach me likewise to number the days of this world’s greatness, of which I have so great a share;
and teach me to look upon them as vanity and vexation of spirit.”]

86 See the account of the case in the Collection of State Trials; Citters, May
4/14., June 22/July 2 1686; Evelyn’s Diary, June 27.; Luttrell’s Diary, June 25. As to Street, see Clarendon’s Diary,
Dec. 27. 1688.]

88 See the letters patent in Gutch’s Collectanca Curiosa. The date is the 3d of
May, 1686. Sclater’s Consensus Veterum; Gee’s reply, entitled Veteres Vindicati; Dr. Anthony Horneck’s account of Mr.
Sclater’s recantation of the errors of Popery on the 5th of May, 1689; Dodd’s Church History, part viii. book ii. art.
3.]

94 The whole question is lucidly and unanswerably argued in a little contemporary
tract, entitled “The King’s Power in Matters Ecclesiastical fairly stated.” See also a concise but forcible argument by
Archbishop Sancroft. Doyly’s Life of Sancroft, i. 229.]

98 The device was a rose and crown. Before the device was the initial letter of
the Sovereign’s name; after it the letter R. Round the seal was this inscription, “Sigillum commissariorum regiae
majestatis ad causas ecclesiasticas.”]

115 See the memoirs of Johnson, prefixed to the folio edition of his life, his
Julian, and his answers to his opponents. See also Hickes’s Jovian.]

116 Life of Johnson, prefixed to his works; Secret History of the happy
Revolution, by Hugh Speke; State Trials; Citters, Nov 23/Dec 3 1686. Citters gives the best account of the trial. I
have seen a broadside which confirms his narrative.]

118 This I can attest from my own researches. There is an excellent collection in
the British Museum. Birch tells us, in his Life of Tillotson, that Archbishop Wake had not been able to form even a
perfect catalogue of all the tracts published in this controversy.]

119 Cardinal Howard spoke strongly to Burnet at Rome on this subject Burnet, i.
662. There is a curious passage to the same effect in a despatch of Barillon but I have mislaid the reference.

One of the Roman Catholic divines who engaged in this controversy, a Jesuit named Andrew Patton, whom Mr. Oliver, in
his biography of the Order, pronounces to have been a man of distinguished ability, very frankly owns his deficiencies.
“A. P. having been eighteen years out of his own country, pretends not yet to any perfection of the English expression
or orthography.” His orthography is indeed deplorable. In one of his letters wright is put for write, woed for would.
He challenged Tenison to dispute with him in Latin, that they might be on equal terms. In a contemporary satire,
entitled The Advice, is the following couplet

Clench’s English is of a piece with his Tuscan. For example, “Peter signifies an inexpugnable rock, able to evacuate
all the plots of hell’s divan, and naufragate all the lurid designs of empoisoned heretics.”

Another Roman Catholic treatise, entitled “The Church of England truly represented,” begins by informing us that
“the ignis fatuus of reformation, which had grown to a comet by many acts of spoil and rapine, had been ushered into
England, purified of the filth which it had contracted among the lakes of the Alps.”]

142 Citters, May 11/21 1686. Citters informed the States that he had his
intelligence from a sure hand. I will transcribe part of his narrative. It is an amusing specimen of the pyebald
dialect in which the Dutch diplomatists of that age corresponded.

There is, in the Hind Let Loose, a curious passage to which I should have given no credit, but for this despatch of
Citters. “They cannot endure so much as to hear of the name of conscience. One that was well acquaint with the
Council’s humour in this point told a gentleman that was going before them, ‘I beseech you, whatever you do, speak
nothing of conscience before the Lords, for they cannot abide to hear that word.’"]

149 The provisions of the Irish Act of Supremacy, 2 Eliz. chap. I., are
substantially the same with those of the English Act of Supremacy, I Eliz. chap. I. hut the English act was soon found
to be defective and the defect was supplied by a more stringent act, 5 Eliz. chap. I No such supplementary law was made
in Ireland. That the construction mentioned in the text was put on the Irish Act of Supremacy, we are told by
Archbishop King: State of Ireland, chap. ii. sec. 9. He calls this construction Jesuitical but I cannot see it in that
light.]

155 King, chap. ii. sec. 8. Miss Edgeworth’s King Corny belongs to a later and
much more civilised generation; but whoever has studied that admirable portrait can form some notion of what King
Corny’s great grandfather must have been.]

157 Sheridan MS.; Preface to the first volume of the Hibernia Anglicana, 1690;
Secret Consults of the Romish Party in Ireland, 1689.]

158 “There was a free liberty of conscience by connivance, though not by the
law.”— King, chap. iii. sec. i.]

159 In a letter to James found among Bishop Tyrrel’s papers, and dated Aug. 14.
1686, are some remarkable expressions. “There are few or none Protestants in that country but such as are joined with
the Whigs against the common enemy.” And again: “Those that passed for Tories here” (that is in England) “publicly
espouse the Whig quarrel on the other side the water.” Swift said the same thing to King William a few years later “I
remember when I was last in England, I told the King that the highest Tories we had with us would make tolerable Whigs
there.”— Letters concerning the Sacramental Test.]

160 The wealth and negligence of the established clergy of Ireland are mentioned
in the strongest terms by the Lord Lieutenant Clarendon, a most unexceptionable witness.]

161 Clarendon reminds the King of this in a letter dated March 14. “It certainly
is,” Clarendon adds, “a most true notion.”]

162 Clarendon strongly recommended this course, and was of opinion that the Irish
Parliament would do its part. See his letter to Ormond, Aug. 28. 1686.]

163 It was an O’Neill of great eminence who said that it did not become him to
writhe his mouth to chatter English. Preface to the first volume of the Hibernia Anglicana.]

164 Sheridan MS. among the Stuart Papers. I ought to acknowledge the courtesy
with which Mr. Glover assisted me in my search for this valuable manuscript. James appears, from the instructions which
he drew up for his son in 1692, to have retained to the last the notion that Ireland could not without danger be
entrusted to an Irish Lord Lieutenant.]

184 Sheridan MS. King’s State of the Protestants of Ireland, chap. iii. sec. 3.
sec. 8. There is a most striking instance of Tyrconnel’s impudent mendacity in Clarendon’s letter to Rochester, July
22. 1686.]

195 Barillon, Dec. 2/12 1686; Burnet, i. 684.; Clarke’s Life of James the Second,
ii. 100.; Dodd’s Church History. I have tried to frame a fair narrative out of these conflicting materials. It seems
clear to me, from Rochester’s own papers that he was on this occasion by no means so stubborn as he has been
represented by Burnet and by the biographer of James.]

202 Bishop Malony in a letter to Bishop Tyrrel says, “Never a Catholic or other
English will ever think or make a step, nor suffer the King to make a step for your restauration, but leave you as you
were hitherto, and leave your enemies over your heads: nor is there any Englishman, Catholic or other, of what quality
or degree soever alive, that will stick to sacrifice all Ireland for to save the least interest of his own in England,
and would as willingly see all Ireland over inhabited by English of whatsoever religion as by the Irish.”]